• People tend to care more about protecting and improving the health of their local streams, rivers, and lakes when they recreate near or on them. Water quality should influence how people interact with their local waterways but often times people are unaware of the the actual current water quality conditions of their water recreation destination. As a result of dramatic news coverage for example, people may believe a water way is generally unsafe when in reality it was only polluted for a short time after the storm. On the other hand, people may wrongly assume a waterway is clean enough to swim or fish in when in fact it is not. In other words, the public needs to be kept safe from water that is dangerously polluted, at the same time they need to be encouraged to enjoy the water resources of their community when they are clean.

Solutions:

• Create a way for people to easily check on the water quality of a waterway where they would like to recreate.
• Translate water quality data into easy to understand terms so that people can know if their favorite water activity (swimming, fishing, kayaking …) is currently safe.

Challenge:

Get people to use, understand, and find meaningful the large amount of water quality testing data from MMSD. Suggest activities that match water quality conditions. If water quality does not allow for a certain activity, empower people with ways they can help improve local water quality.