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Dear River and Watershed Friends,

Upper Merrimack Monitoring Program volunteers began the bacteria sampling season with 100% sampling at 100% of the eleven sites on the Merrimack River from Franklin to Bow and on the Pemigewasset, Winnipesaukee, and Contoocook Rivers. This week continued that excellent trend. We have just one more sampling event left this season.

The good news is that the City of Franklin’s work around Site 1 seems to be lowering the bacteria counts: they are the third lowest of this sampling event and well within Class B standards.

The not-so-good news: Wednesday’s storm with dramatic rainfall and runoff resulted in four sites exceeding Class B standards. All but two were over Class A standards. Depending on the weather for our next event, we expect to see those levels lower than they were this week.

As a reminder,  the readings shown below are the number of E. coli bacteria colonies for every 100 millilitres of water. Warm blooded animals (including humans) all have E. coli in their guts. State designated swim beaches are not allowed to exceed 88 colonies and Class B waters (all of our sites are Class B waters) should be below 406 colonies. Here are the details.

You’ll hear from us again after the August 23 (our last of the season) sampling day.

Please visit our fresh and newly designed forum at MerrimackRiver.org/forum.
You can also find us at MerrimackRiver.org for further information or don’t hesitate to contact us at UMMP@MerrimackRiver.org or 603.796.2615 should you have any questions.

Sincerely,
                                           
Michele L Tremblay                          Stephen C Landry
Program Manager                             Sampling Supervisor