Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta Continuous (15 minute) Water Quality Monitoring: South Delta Region, collected by the North Central Region Office, DWR, 1999 – ongoing

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) Water Quality Evaluation Section (WQES) provides technical expertise and program support for regulatory compliance, water operations, emergency response, and environmental restoration. Wireless telemetry is used to transmit real-time provisional data to the California Data Exchange Center (CDEC), making the data publicly available. The published dataset is quality controlled and quality assured providing detailed information at 15-minute intervals from 18 monitoring stations, using Xylem’s YSI EXO2 and YSI 6600 multiparameter sondes to document individual water quality measurements of multiple water quality parameters.

The dataset informs operations for the California State Water Project and supports water quality monitoring required by Water Right Decision D-1641, the Delta Compliance Program, the South Delta Temporary Barriers and the South Delta Improvement Program. It is important to note that the start dates and subsequent equipment upgrades vary between stations and equipment leading to discrepancies in the dataset’s date ranges.