Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring is an increasingly popular technology that is being used across the nation and the world. This technology allows users to have up-to-date water quality results, set at whatever frequency and providing parameters that are desired. The purpose of using real-time monitors can range from government agencies monitoring the effects of pollution to fishermen interested in knowing water temperatures.

MREAC is involved with two Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring projects on the Miramichi, working with a number of partners. You can find more details about these projects below.

Doaktown Weather Station

Doaktown Station - Courtesy of Daniel Cassie, DFO

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been collecting "real-time data" from a weather station at the Atlantic Salmon Museum in Doaktown, NB. DFO established a partnership with MREAC to allow community access to the data generated from the weather station on the Southwest Miramichi River. With MREAC's close association with NBCC Miramichi, access to the station is being shared with the Environmental Technology class. This will increase the students knowledge of real-time monitoring and the data will assist with projects and research. The parameters this weather station collects are: water level, water temperature, conductivity, air temperature, relative humidity and precipitation.

MREAC has been taking advantage of this access to data by providing a service to the local recreational fishing industry. During the fishing season (middle of April to middle of October), a graph is posted daily displaying a weekly (seven day) trend of the water levels and temperature at this station on world renown famous Atlantic Salmon fishing river, the Southwest Miramichi River. This data provides fishermen some insight of the water conditions, as well as for local authorities such as DFO for management purposes.

*Please take note, the daily posting of the graph will be during the work week - graph will not be updated on weekends and holidays.
**Also take note, the water level sensor is not operating properly, therefore the water level data will not be displayed until the sensor is replaced.

Napan River Water Quality Station

The Napan River has long been impacted by the drainage from the former Chatham Air Base, and more recently from the industrial and residential developments and some agricultural activity on the river. As a small Miramichi watershed that has been impacted over recent decades, this tributary was selected to be one of Environment Canada’s Chemical Management Plan (CMP) sites to explore potential impacts of chemicals of concern. In July 2009, an unexplained spike of one of the targeted chemicals tested for this program, biphenol A, was discovered. With more questions than answers about what was going on with the river at that time, it was thought that a real-time water quality monitoring station at the site may help answer these questions if any future spikes occur.

MREAC's Napan Real-Time Monitoring Station

This project will also be used as a learning tool for the NBCC Miramichi's Environmental Technology class. As partners of this project, students will be taught about real-time monitoring technology and have actual hands on training with the Napan River unit. Students will have the opportunity to join MREAC staff on site visits and access the real time data for projects. Environment Canada CMP staff will also have direct access to this station.