Norwalk River Monitoring to Continue

Private donors and the town of Weston have come up with the money to keep Dick Harris's Harbor Watch/River Watch water quality monitoring program on the Norwalk River alive.

A few weeks ago the state DEP said it would no longer fund the program. It has a legitimate reason -- the program had met its goal of determining water quality in the river so the department could set limits on pollutants. That seems like a smart decision and I have no problem with the state doing what it said it was going to do in the first place and not wanting to fund programs forever.

But a testing program that relies on a group of volunteers is worthwhile not just because it records water quality data but also because it gets a group of people physically in touch with the river. Finding local donors and a municipality to help with the funding might actually help strengthen that connection.

Here's the Stamford Advocate's story.