Government of Manitoba Long Term Water Quality Monitoring Program

The Government of Manitoba’s Long Term Water Quality Monitoring Program supports the Department’s mandate to provide services to protect and maintain the quality of Manitoba’s aquatic ecosystems by developing and implementing coherent long term water quality monitoring programs and activities that are responsive to present and future needs, issues and pressures. Water quality data are collected through grab samples. These samples are sent for laboratory analysis where they can be analyzed for a suite of 120 water quality variables including general chemistry, nutrients, major ions, metals, pesticides and pharmaceuticals/estrogens. The four site locations presented here are only a small subset of the 65 site locations monitored through the program. These four site locations represent four major river systems that flow into Lake Winnipeg. Samples are collected monthly from each of these four sites, with the exception of the Dauphin River, which is collected quarterly.

The data are used by the Government of Manitoba in a variety of ways to assess water quality conditions, through technical reports including trends, loads, and the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment Water Quality Index, to name a few. The data are also used for water quality modelling and to inform policy decisions associated with Environment Act processes and Integrated Watershed Management Planning, to name a few. These data are also frequently requested and used externally by a number of stakeholders, consultants, academia and non-government organizations.