Every season, Arundel Rivers Federation coordinates a bacteria monitoring program to track enterococcus levels at community waterfront locations throughout the South, West, and Rhode River watersheds.
At the heart of this work are the communities themselves. Their desire to know whether it is safe to swim, paddle, or recreate in their rivers and creeks is what drives this monitoring program forward. Each of the 30+ sampling sites across these watersheds was selected by community members and is sampled weekly by volunteers and staff from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend.
Over time, the Arundel Rivers Federation monitoring team began noticing a pattern during sampling events: more and more people were stopping to ask questions. What are you testing for? Why does it matter? What do the results mean?
Those conversations revealed something important. Even though this monitoring happens seasonally and their team regularly engages with residents, there were still many community members who were unfamiliar with both the program and the broader work Arundel Rivers does throughout these watersheds.
That realization sparked a larger conversation within Arundel Rivers team: how can they better connect communities to the waterways they monitor even when they are not physically present to answer questions?
Accessibility and transparency have always been priorities of the Arundel Rivers Federation. Data collected through the bacteria monitoring program is already shared publicly through Swim Guide, social media, direct email updates and their website. But they wanted to create another way for people to engage directly with the information while standing at the very places being monitored.
That concept led to the idea to create community monitoring signs. Installed at select waterfront sampling locations, these signs are designed to make bacteria monitoring data more visible, understandable, and accessible to the public. Anyone passing by can scan the QR code on the sign to access the latest bacteria monitoring results through Swim Guide in real time.
Beyond the data itself, the signs also explain:
- What is being sampled,
- Why bacteria monitoring matters,
- And what community members can do to help protect local waterways.
By connecting science directly to the places people live, work, and recreate, data becomes more than numbers on a spreadsheet; it becomes a tool for informed decision making and meaningful community action.
Currently, Arundel Rivers Federation installed their first bacteria monitoring-specific community sign in 2025 at an interested community waterfront center. However, educational signage has long been part of Arundel River Federation’s restoration and outreach efforts throughout their watersheds. The expansion of future signage projects will depend on available funding and continued community interest.
Thanks to additional grant funding they were able to design and install their first sign and hope to bring similar signage to more bacteria monitoring locations throughout the South, West, and Rhode River watersheds in the future.
Monitoring the health of the South, West and Rhode Rivers remains central to Arundel River Federation’s mission driven work. In order to protect and restore these waterways, they must first understand their health and equally important ensure that information is accessible to the communities that live alongside them every day.
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