Water Quality Management

Stillwater Sciences delivers integrated water quality services that help clients address water quality management issues and regulatory requirements while protecting federally, state, and locally sensitive aquatic species. To support practical, defensible decision-making, we combine our field sampling expertise with rigorous QA/QC procedures to evaluate water quality influences on riverine aquatic ecology, reservoir and estuarine sediment chemistry, nutrient cycling, trace metals, invasive mussel vulnerability, algae community composition and dynamics, as well as biogeochemistry.

The services below can be tailored to meet specific water quality management issues:

• Water quality monitoring: Develop and implement targeted and longer-term water quality monitoring programs; sampling and analysis of physical, chemical, and biological data; continuous water quality monitoring; evaluate spatial and temporal variation and trends; review of existing methods to ensure compliance with state water quality standards.
• Water temperature monitoring and modeling: Conduct long-term temperature monitoring and apply reach- and watershed-scale models to assess temperature effects of lake and watershed management.
• Algae monitoring and management: Design and implement monitoring algae and cyanobacteria monitoring programs for rivers, lakes, and estuaries; interpret algal indices and time-series data; develop reservoir oxygenation and other mitigation strategies for harmful algal blooms, cyanotoxins, and taste-and-odor compounds.
• Biogeochemistry: Assess nutrient and contaminant cycling in aquatic systems, including mercury bioaccumulation, sediment/water exchanges, greenhouse gas fluxes, and stable isotope analysis of aquatic food webs.
• Invasive mussel vulnerability assessment: Invasive mussel visual inspection, eDNA and water quality sampling; evaluate suitability of site-specific water quality to sustain invasive mussels; develop vulnerability assessments and invasive mussel prevention plans.
• Regulatory compliance: Provide technical support for water quality permitting and compliance, including Clean Water Act requirements, support of existing beneficial uses, CEQA/NEPA effects analyses, sediment quality screening, and TMDL evaluations.
• Quality Assurance Project Plans: Development of EPA-compliant QAPPs that establish rigorous protocols for water quality data collection and integrity, from oversight and sampling methods to data validation and QC, documentation of audits and corrective actions that ensure validated data meets performance criteria and is technically defensible for regulatory use.
• Treatment wetlands: Design and model nutrient removal for surface-flow treatment wetlands receiving urban and agricultural stormwater; design and assess performance of horizontal levee treatment systems.