Water Quality Monitoring - Chattooga Conservancy

Chattooga River Watershed

Water Quality Data

The Chattooga River’s water quality is threatened by pollution in several of its tributaries. The Chattooga Conservancy works to monitor streams and creeks throughout the watershed, identify potential sources of sediment and fecal coliform pollution, and find ways to mitigate these pollution sources. Current and historic sample locations can be seen on our Chattooga Watershed Interactive Map.

If you’re interested in volunteering to collect samples, please let us know! Call us at 864-647-9849 or email info@chattoogariver.org.

If you would like to support our water quality monitoring efforts, please consider becoming a member or donating! Annual contributions from our members help us continue projects like this that lead to direct actions to protect the river we all love.

Georgia and South Carolina water quality standards vary depending on stream/water classification, and criteria are based on at least 4 samples collected from a given site over a 30-day period. The following apply to sample sites in the Chattooga River watershed:

Georgia

State water quality standards for fecal coliform:

May- Oct: Not to exceed a geometric mean of 200 cfu/100 mL
Nov- April: Not to exceed a geometric mean of 1,000 cfu/100 mL; no single sample shall exceed 4,000 cfu/100 mL.

South Carolina

State water quality standards for E. coli:

Not to exceed a geometric mean of 126/100 mL; no single sample shall exceed 349/100 mL.

Fecal Coliform/ E. coli Results (2023-present)

cfu/100 mL

< Scroll left/right within the table to view additional dates >

SiteID	River/Creek	Location_Description	3/31/24	2/29/24	1/31/24	1/3/24	9/28/23	5/24/23	5/10/23	4/5/23	2/1/23	1/5/23
WC-RG	Whetstone Creek	Rocky Gap	67	33		133	200*	967	1,266	1500*
WC-CR	Whetstone Creek	Chattooga Confluence									300*	266*
WC-CON	Whetstone Creek	Conley Rd	1900*	367		167	633*	3,133	600	7900*	2233*	600*
WC-E	Whetstone Creek	Earl's Ford Rd bridge						600	3,600
WC-JM	Whetstone Creek	John Mtn Rd						1,167	3,600
WC-CPO	Whetstone Creek	Conley Pond Outlet						0	0
LC-1	Long Creek	Orchard Rd	33	0		0	100*	33		33*	100*	500*
FC-NF	Fall Creek - North Fork	Fall Creek Rd. Extension	67	67	33			367	NA	0*	0*	300*

*E. coli
TNTC= Too numerous to count

Click here to download 2019 data (2020-2022 data available soon).