Water Rangers Test Strip Monitoring Protocol
Use this document to effectively test water quality in your community. Follow all guidelines to ensure your safety and accurate test results. Reach out to the Water Rangers team with any questions (waterrangers@sraproject.org).
Reminders
- Never use expired test strips. Test strips are dated on the bottom of the bottle.
- After every use, clean sample bottles with distilled water and clean ammonia sample vials with tap water. Never wash and reuse sample bottles with soaps or detergents.
- Test strips are to be used as indicators for levels of pollution that may trigger a more extensive chain of custody analysis at a certified laboratory. Test strips can also show trends in waterway health over time.
- Test strips alone should never trigger a violation complaint unless combined with visual, photo, or video evidence of a manure discharge; a water quality problem; or an operational violation (e.g., manure in the water, strong smell of manure in the water, a significant fish kill, runoff from a land-application field, manure spreading in the rain, etc.).
- Don’t trespass, assume all water is toxic, and avoid confrontation.
Items for a Monitor’s Sampling Toolkit:
Required:
- Testing strips
- Clean sampling bottles
- Rubber, latex, or nitrile gloves
- Hand sanitizer
- First aid kit
- Cell phone for emergency communication and photos/videos
- Notebook or field observation sheet to document what you see
Recommended:
- Details of facility you’re investigating
- DOT road maps that include right-of-way information
- Drain maps
- Water pole for sample collection
- Distilled water for rinsing hands and sampling pole
Have your agencies’ pollution emergency phone numbers to report any manure discharge!
Water Rangers Monitoring Step-by-Step Guidelines
1. Prep materials to take a water sample
- Grab a sampling bottle from your kit (we use 100 mL bottles).
- Mark bottle with date, time, and location (use tape if you want to reuse bottles).
2. Take water sample(s)
- Two options for sampling:
- Sampling in the waterway: Get as close to middle of waterway as possible; choose a sample site that isn’t disturbed.
- Sampling from the bank: Stand on the bank of the waterway and use a sampling pole to take sample as close to middle as possible.
- Dip sample bottle into water 3–4 inches below the surface, fill, and pour water out away from sample site to rinse bottle. Do this at least 3 times.
- Do not touch inside of bottle.
- Avoid collecting surface water.
- Dip sample bottle 3–4 inches below the surface and fill to collect the water sample.
3. Analyze the sample
- Analyze the sample at a safe place (we recommend you put your water sample on ice in a cooler and go to a safe place to do the analysis).
- Use test strips. Follow the instructions for each test-strip test:
Test Strips
Record your monitoring results!
Visit sraproject.org or reach out to us for our data management resources.
Contact: waterrangers@sraproject.org
State Pollution/Spill Hotlines:
Illinois: 1-800-782-7860
Indiana: 1-317-233-7745
Michigan: 1-800-292-4706
Minnesota: 1-651-649-5451
Nebraska: 1-913-281-0991
Ohio: 1-800-282-9378
Wisconsin: 1-800-943-0003
Record Your State Pollution Hotline Number!
Share important data with nearest Tribal Nations
It’s important that Tribes receive up-to-date information and data that are relevant to their communities. Local, state, and federal regulatory agencies have often overlooked Tribal communities when it comes to sending them important environmental information. If you find important water quality data during your sampling or come across relevant CAFO permit documents, you should alert the closest Tribal Nation to the sampling or facility site.
Visit sraproject.org/tribal-nations to find and follow SRAP’s protocol for sharing data and permit information with Tribal Nations.