Many folks from town know the pristine beauty and bounty inherent in the stretch of Newtown's Pootatuck River, a Class A-1 trout stream that meanders through Sandy Hook toward its confluence with the Housatonic River. But since May 1965, the US Geological Survey (USGS) has been keeping tabs on this local water body by placing monitoring gauges along its banks.Real Time MonitoringWater Quality Concerns

The latest data gathering station was installed in July 2006 behind 100 Church Hill Road, near where Church Hill Road crosses the Pootatuck and ends in Sandy Hook Center. While that station continues to provide the USGS with basic water level information, the federal agency is increasing its presence on the Pootatuck in the coming months, taking much larger samples for analysis as part of a regional Northeast Stream Quality Assessment initiative also known as NESQA.

On one recent day, biologist Karen Beaulieu and colleague Guy Holzer strapped on hip waders to launch the first of nine extensive data-gathering trips into the clean, cold Pootatuck waters. Ms Beaulieu explained that their visits to Sandy Hook will be part of widespread testing covering 95 sites across the region.

For up to nine weeks during June, July and early August, the pair, along with scientist colleagues from the region, will return to sites like the Pootatuck to look for contaminants, nutrients and sediment. This water-quality "index" period will culminate with an ecological survey of habitat, algae, benthic invertebrates and fish at all sites.

Streambed sediment will be collected during the ecological survey for analysis of sediment chemistry and toxicity.

The objectives of this massive water quality indexing are to:

*Determine the status of stream quality across the region on the basis of nutrients, contaminants, toxicity, sediment, flow, habitat and biological communities;

*Evaluate the relative influence of the measured chemical and physical stressors on biological communities in the streams sampled;

*Evaluate relations between watershed characteristics (both natural and anthropogenic) and the measured stressors and biological communities of the streams; and

*Develop models and management tools to predict stressors and ecological conditions in wadeable streams across the region.

Ms Beaulieu, who along with Mr Holzer is based out of East Hartford's New England Water Science Center, said interested residents can learn more about the agency's work, along with monitoring their project in real time, by visiting ct.water.usgs.gov.

According to the agency, findings will provide the public and policymakers with information about the most critical factors affecting stream quality, thus providing insights about possible approaches to protect the health of streams in the region.

The NESQA study will be the fourth regional study conducted as part of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) and will be of similar design and scope to the first three, in the Midwest in 2013, the Southeast in 2014, and the Pacific Northwest in 2015.

The ultimate goal of the NESQA is to assess the quality of streams in the region by characterizing multiple water-quality factors that are stressors to aquatic life and evaluating the relation between these stressors and biological communities.

The focus of NESQA in 2016 will be on the effects of urbanization and agriculture on stream quality in all or parts of eight states: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Urbanization, particularly in the greater Boston to New York City corridor and around other major cities in New England and New York, is causing water-quality concerns in the region. Additionally, the effects of agricultural practices on water quality are concerns in the western parts of the NESQA study area.

The study design, the agency states, will sample 63 sites with watersheds that reflect a wide range of urbanization, 19 sites with undeveloped forested watersheds and 13 sites with agricultural watersheds.

One visit, Ms Beaulieu said, will involve surveying and collecting living samples including algal (micorscopic single-celled to multicellular aquatic organisms), benthic macroinvertebrates and fish communities. These assessments will be done along a 150-meter section of each stream.

While stream water level and temperature are monitored continuously at all 95 sites across the region, continuous water-quality monitors will be deployed at five sites including the Pootatuck. Continuous monitoring for parameters such as dissolved oxygen and nitrate concentration, in conjunction with periodic sampling of nutrients and periphyton biomass, will provide useful information on the effects of nutrients in streams a USGS information packet states.

Finally, fish specimens from each of the 95 sites will be analyzed for total mercury. Fish from a subset of sites will be analyzed for isotopes of mercury, a technique that can indicate the sources of the mercury.

That part of the study could provide new insights given the large sample size and diversity of stream settings being sampled.