The Bacteria Monitoring Team works in collaboration with the Cohasset Board of Health to ensure that water quality samples are drawn weekly at the public beaches and delivered to the Board of Health at Town Hall. Two sets of samples are drawn each week at Cohasset’s 3 public beaches- Sandy Beach, Rocky (Black Rock) Beach, and Bassings Beach. One set of samples is processed by a state-certified lab (located in Quincy, MA) while the other set of samples is processed by the CSCR team. CSCR’s proximity and its dedicated focus on this task enables the Bacteria Team to report results to the Board of Health before it receives its “official” results from the state-certified lab. This enables CSCR to alert the Board of Health if counts exceed the state standard, thereby setting into motion a new round of sampling. Without the support of the CSCR Research team, department personnel would be without an advance warning team as well as a field sampling team.
Additionally, the Bacteria Team samples throughout the harbor and watershed, as needed or as designed by the team in response to research questions the team wants to answer (such as the harbor foam and its capacity to contribute to bacteria counts).
Bacteria Data summer 2023
The IDEXX Water Monitoring Academy: The company from whom we purchase our bacteria supplies is IDEXX. They have created a series of tutorials and quizzes about their products- the chemistry behind the product (how it works), the methodologies or protocols to follow, and the product that best fits a monitoring purpose. To begin working your way through the video series, click the IDEXX video Academy link to register.
