SURFACE WATER AND KARST SYSTEM MONITORING IN BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY

The City of Bowling Green, KY is faced with many common urban water quality challenges along with the added complexity of karst topography. The lack of surface drainage in this area directly results in the karst system being the conduit for stormwater and other threats to water quality. Bowling Green has taken many steps to address these water quality issues. The Surface Water and Karst System monitoring program ran by the City in collaboration with Western Kentucky University's WATERS laboratory as part of the cities Storm Water management program, is intended to provide data to evaluate the overall progress of the program and identify issues that require additional attention. This program has been designed to be an “adaptive” monitoring program verses one of a “rigid” research nature. Information from this program is being used to identify pollutants and other water shed relationships. Areas of concern and those that need additional evaluation are also being identified. Voluntary monitoring with water samples being collected and analyzed from nine locations on a quarterly basis started in 2005. Sites were selected specifically for their predominant land use or to characterize the area's water shed. Samples are analyzed for five field parameters and twenty-eight laboratory parameters: pH, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity and turbidity, total suspended solids, total organic carbon, biological oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, chromium, copper, lead, iron, nickel, silver, oil and grease, atrizine, phosphate, flouride, chloride, nitrite, nitrate, bromide, sulfate, lithium, sodium, ammonium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, calcium hardness, turbidity and fecal coliform. Field and laboratory blanks were analyzed to verify analytical procedures and check effectiveness of equipment-cleaning procedures. Data gained has been used to characterize the status and trends within monitored water bodies with respect to Kentucky Surface Water Standards, identify pollutants of concern, characterize influence of land use on water quality, evaluate relationships between surface water and karst system water quality, and evaluate water quality under a range of hydrologic conditions and seasons.