Volunteer Nitrate Monitoring Network Final Report

This regional project developed and tested the concept of a cost-effective, locally-driven, and self-sustaining means of obtaining long-term trend data for nitrate occurrence in private drinking water supplies where the well owner is at the heart of the process. To obtain a representative sample of wells that would answer the question, What is the quality of the water that people are drinking in terms of nitrate? a 675-point grid was superimposed over a nine-county region of southeastern Minnesota. A buffer two miles in diameter was circumscribed around each grid point. A random parcel was then selected within each buffer and the parcel owner recruited as a volunteer. If this parcel owner was not interested another parcel was identified"