Small urban streams running through neighborhoods or on public grounds are often degraded, undervalued and underutilized. Urban streams are also often considered a low priority by state and federal agencies.
Biological monitoring, or identifying and counting aquatic macroinevertebrates in a section of the stream, is one way to check stream health, and it’s the technique used by the Stream Monitoring Information Exchange, a long-term volunteer water quality monitoring effort in Western North Carolina currently coordinated by the Environmental Quality Institute.
Clean Water for North Carolina is partnering with Green Opportunities, a nonprofit focusing on green-collar job training and placement, and other groups in the Asheville area to train young adults in urban neighborhoods to:
- Use the biological monitoring method,
- Identify environmental injustices in their neighborhoods,
- Take action to prevent pollution, and
- reach out to their communities to get involved!
Photos from the past two years of the Urban Community Streams program:
Partners:
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