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5 <br />Attachment B <br />Existing Water Quality Monitoring Programs <br />Currently, several organizations are monitoring surface water quality in Orange County. <br />• The Town of Hillsborough samples the Eno River for a few parameters in order <br />to demonstrate compliance with the National Pollution Discharge Elimination <br />System (NPDES) permit for its wastewater treatment plant. <br />• The Upper Cape Fear River Basin Association conducts routine water quality <br />sampling and analysis of Morgan Creek as part of the Orange Water and Sewer <br />Authority (OWASA) NPDES compliance program. <br />• The City of Durham samples a few locations in Orange County, in addition to <br />many locations within the City limits, to document background water quality <br />conditions. <br />• The United States Geological Survey (USGS) conducts water quality sampling <br />of University Lake, Cane Creek Reservoir and the West Fork on the Eno <br />Reservoir as part of the Triangle Water Supply Monitoring Project (TAWSMP), of <br />which Orange County is a founding member. In addition, the USGS has <br />collected water samples at the stream gage on the Eno River in Hillsborough <br />since the 1930s. <br />Limited sampling is conducted in Orange County by the North Carolina Division <br />of Water Quality (DWQ). DWQ periodically (once every 5 years) samples <br />benthic macroinvertebrates and fish populations at a few locations. This is done <br />to document water quality conditions for Use Support Assessment, which results <br />in the assigning of stream ratings to individual stream segments. Unfortunately, <br />some of the stream monitoring performed by DWQ is actually completed in <br />Chatham County, and the resulting stream rating is projected upstream into <br />Orange County. While DWQ samples at more than 300 locations across the <br />state through their Ambient Monitoring System (AMS), no such sampling <br />locations are present in Orange County. <br />• The Town of Chapel Hill sampled several surface water locations for chemical <br />parameters and macroinvertebrate populations from 1994 through 2008 but is <br />currently sampling only for benthic macroinvertebrates. <br />Orange County Department of Environment, Agriculture, Parks & Recreation <br />PO Box 8181, Hillsborough, NC 27278 <br />Phone: (919) 245-2510 Fax: (919) 644-3351 <br />