Friends has been monitoring water quality in the Mad River since 1985 and has the longest continuous volunteer water quality monitoring dataset in the country. The work of our volunteers drives important conversations about water quality, the health of our watershed, climate resilience, and the stewardship of our natural resources.
A Note About 2022 First of all, we want to offer a huge thank you to our 2021 Mad River Watch volunteers. By field testing the new program last year, our volunteers taught us important lessons about the methods, tools, and data we can collect from our field sites.
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Questions? Want to be a Mad River Watch Volunteer?
Please get in touch with us at ira@friendsofthemadriver.org or call (802) 496-9127
Please get in touch with us at ira@friendsofthemadriver.org or call (802) 496-9127
Thank you, Lawson's Finest Liquids, for sponsoring
Mad River Watch 2.0! The Lawson’s Finest Social Impact Program helps support thriving communities, including protecting our natural environment for generations to come.
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"Lawson’s Finest is thrilled to partner with Friends of the Mad River. A healthy watershed starts with clean water in our streams and rivers, which in turn provides pristine ground water. We rely on Waitsfield's town water source on Scrag Mountain to make great beer, making it our most important resource to protect.”
-Sean Lawson, CEO and Founding Brewer at Lawson’s Finest Liquids |
The Mad River Watch Program is grounded in decades of water quality monitoring along the Mad River and its tributaries. The program connects community members to our watershed through the collection of high quality information at key monitoring sites throughout the valley. The work of our volunteers helps;
- To build public support for clean water
- To establish and maintain a long-term valley wide information base to help us evaluate the long-term health of the river and to take actions to improve and maintain it.
- To provide an enriching educational and practical experience for junior and senior high school students which integrates and applies several sciences and social studies.
- To increase public awareness of the connection between land use and water quality.
Photos by Kinny Perot, Shelby Semmes, Tyne Pike-Sprenger
Want to be a Mad River Watch Volunteer?
Please contact us at ira@friendsofthemadriver.org or call (802) 496-9127