PA Environment Digest Blog: York County Partners With USGS On Water Quality Monitoring To Document Nutrient, Sediment Pollution Going Into Local Streams, Chesapeake Bay

On April 22, as the nation celebrates Earth Day, York County officials announced the county’s water pollutant levels are significantly lower than initially reported by the state, according to data from the county’s 10-year Water Quality Monitoring initiative – the first of its kind in the state and the nation.

The monitoring shows an average of 105.7 million pounds of sediment, 7.2 million pounds of nitrogen and 370,064 pounds of phosphorus are polluting York County streams every year.

“We are the first county in Pennsylvania and the entire nation to undertake this kind of innovative water quality monitoring program,” said York County President Commissioner Julie Wheeler. “Here in York County, we pride ourselves on the responsible stewardship of our precious land and waterways.”

The county began its Water Quality Monitoring program in 2020, following a 2019 report from the Department of Environmental Protection that claimed York County was the second-highest contributor to key pollutants of nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment entering the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay.

The DEP had used computer-modeling to generate its water quality data, prompting York County to develop a real-time water quality monitoring program.

Through York County’s first-of-its-kind partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the county has been able to capture accurate data from six state-of-the-art water quality monitoring stations along the county’s eastern boundary.

The data from 2020 through 2024 indicate that the pollutant levels are lower than what the state DEP had reported – in some cases, exponentially lower.

The monitoring stations capture data from Fishing Creek at Goldsboro and Craley, Codorus Creek, Kreutz Creek and Muddy Creek. The stations capture data round-the-clock and year-round, providing an accurate real-time and long-term picture of the water quality at each station.

The county’s 10-year water monitoring partnership with the USGS is now at its halfway point – providing critical real-time data that can now be used to help measure the county’s ongoing progress at reducing pollutants into the waterways.

“As we work to implement strategies to further protect our waterways, we all benefit when our efforts are directed by sound, robust data,” said Andrew D. Dehoff, executive director of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. “We applaud York County and the USGS for developing this innovative, data-first program, which can help inform our pollutant-reduction efforts moving forward. Our hope is that this will be a model for other counties to ensure their efforts are based on the best data available.”

As part of its ongoing efforts to reduce pollutant levels in the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay watershed, York County has engaged community stakeholders, such as the county’s farmers, the York County Conservation District and others, working together to develop solutions.

“York County’s agricultural community understands that we share a common goal to reduce pollutants in our waterways,” said Barron Shaw, president of the York County Farm Bureau. “We have made great strides to help keep our waterways clean, and now with this real-time data at our disposal we can continue that progress by using reliable information to better measure our success.”

While the DEP in 2019 reported York County waterways had 957 million pound of sediment, York County’s real-time data through the USGS show a four-year average of approximately 105.7 million pounds of sediment – meaning the DEP’s computer-generated data reported sediment levels over 900 percent greater than the actual, real-time data through the USGS monitoring stations.

The differences in the nitrogen data were also significant, with DEP’s computer-generated data showing nearly 12 million pounds of nitrogen in York County waterways while the real-time data developed by the county showed a four-year average of just 7.2 million pounds – or 60 percent of the levels reported by DEP.

Phosphorus levels also were less under the real-time water quality monitoring done by the county and USGS, with the four-year average being 370,064 pounds of phosphorus compared with the DEP’s reported 446,995 pounds – a roughly 17 percent difference.

“We have long suspected that the water pollutant numbers reported by DEP were not accurate, and we now have the data that shows we were correct,” said Wade Gobrecht, director of the York County Planning Commission. “Through this first-of-its-kind collaboration with the USGS, we have real-time data collected over a four-year timeframe, which show unequivocally that our waterways are cleaner than what had previously been reported. Moving forward, we believe this approach will ensure we are relying on accurate data to help drive our water quality improvement efforts."

“Our waterways are a precious resource, and we all have a shared responsibility to keep them clean,” Wheeler said. “Here in York County, we’re proving once again that community, collaboration and innovation are the keys to success.”

For more information, visit York County’s Water Quality Monitoring initiative, webpage.

How Clean Is Your Stream?

The draft 2024 report has an interactive report viewer that allows you to zoom in to your own address to see if the streams near you are impaired and why.

Click Here to check out your streams. Click Here for a tutorial on using the viewer.

Watershed Grants Available

April 25-- DEP Local Abandoned Mine Reclamation Grants

May 13-- NFWF Delaware Watershed Conservation Fund

May 13-- NFWF Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grants

May 13-- NFWF Chesapeake Watershed Investments For Landscape Defense (WILD)

May 30-- PRPS People, Parks & Community Foundation Grants

May 31-- Commonwealth Financing Authority Act 13 Watershed, Flood, Sewage, Recreation Grants

June 2-- Coldwater Heritage Partnership Conservation Grants

June 20-- Growing Greener Plus, Bond Forfeiture, Stormwater Planning Grants

June 20-- EPA Section 319 Grants

October 24-- DEP Local Abandoned Mine Reclamation Grants