Water Action Volunteers (WAV) is a statewide volunteer stream-monitoring program established in 1996 and coordinated by the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in partnership with numerous local organizations and individuals. Volunteers monitored 565 unique sites in 2013. Use the links below to learn more about Water Action Volunteers.

Get Involved!

Find out about how you can become a volunteer stream monitor

Contact the statewide or a local WAV coordinator

Watch short videos to learn more about how volunteers assess how clean the water is at their stream monitoring sites

Borrow equipment (for free!) to carry out stream monitoring

How Clean is the Water?

View monitoring results and/or summary reports about the water quality at sites monitored by volunteers across Wisconsin:

Search by county, site or watershed to view monitoring results for more than 1000 sites that have been monitored by WAV Level 1 volunteers

Search by county and then by site to view summary reports about hundreds of sites monitored in WAV’s Level 2 program

View summary reports for sites monitored as part of WAV’s urban road salt monitoring project

View summary reports for sites monitored for total phosphorus by volunteers

Produced by the UW-Extension Environmental Resources Center