Trey Sherard got the call at 6:30 a.m.
It was two years ago and Anacostia Riverkeeper Sherard was preparing to announce what would have been the first legal swim in the Anacostia River in more than 50 years. People were beginning to gather, including swimmers, observers dignitaries and journalists.
But during that call, Sherard heard the results of the latest water testing.
The river was not considered safe enough.
“I had to shut off that swim,” Sherard recalled Wednesday. “I was getting ready to walk down the ramp to announce the swim to the news cameras and instead announced that we were postponing.”
But Sherard would only get more frustrated. A sample of water taken the day of the scheduled swim showed the water was safe after all. Officials had been forced to make a decision using data that was already 24 hours old.
The canceled swim illustrated a challenge river advocates encounter regularly. Residents want to know whether conditions are safe for paddling, fishing or simply spending time on the water, but the information can be scattered across multiple agencies, difficult to interpret and, in the case of some tests, already a day old.
A new monitoring network launched Wednesday aims to change that, making it easier to find and understand near real-time data from nine sensor stations across the Anacostia, Potomac and Shenandoah rivers through a publicly accessible online dashboard.
Real Time River
The system combines data from newly installed monitoring buoys with existing government and community science datasets. Designed to resemble a weather reporting app, the platform lets residents check river conditions daily before they head out on the water.
“Water quality and the health of your watershed should be the same way,” said John Dawes, executive director of The Commons, the Washington-based organization that developed the dashboard. “We wanted to make this experience as simple as checking the weather.”
The website (water-quality.reservoircenter.org) displays conditions gathered at nine monitoring locations throughout the Potomac River Basin, including the Anacostia and Shenandoah watersheds. Sensors mounted on floating buoys collect readings approximately every 15 minutes, tracking measures such as dissolved oxygen, conductivity, temperature and turbidity. The platform also incorporates E. coli monitoring results gathered by watershed organizations and shared through the Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative. Users can view current conditions, examine long-term trends and download raw data for research and analysis. Each monitoring site includes explanations of what the measurements mean and why they matter.
Users can view current conditions, examine long-term trends, download raw data and access explanations of what the measurements mean and why they matter. The dashboard uses a simple color-coded system. Green indicates favorable conditions for aquatic life and recreation, while red signals values that could indicate impaired water quality. Purple indicates unusual readings that may reflect a sensor issue, and offline designates equipment that is temporarily unavailable because of maintenance or seasonal shutdowns.
Organizers emphasized that the dashboard is not a regulatory tool and does not provide real-time bacteria measurements. Because E. coli testing still requires laboratory analysis, the system instead uses a combination of sensor data and existing monitoring results to provide a broader picture of river conditions and ecological health. Swimming in the Anacostia and Potomac rivers remains illegal in the District.
Building Data to Build Confidence
The dashboard is intended to fill a gap between highly technical government monitoring systems and the everyday questions residents ask when they arrive at the river.
For Chris Williams, president and chief executive officer of Anacostia Watershed Society, the system is as much about public confidence as water quality.
For more than 50 years, swimming has been prohibited in the Anacostia, and generations of Washingtonians learned to think of the river as polluted and off-limits, Williams said. Even as water quality has improved, many residents remain reluctant to engage with it.
“The issue is Anacostia River has been a mess for a very long time,” Williams said. “There is 50 years of reluctance on the part of folks to interact with the river.”
The dashboard, he said, helps answer the simple question: How do residents know the river is getting better?
“People want information,” Williams said. “They want to know, as we’re telling them all of the good news that there is about the river, how do we know that?”
Water quality has improved for years, Williams said, but many residents have not seen the data behind that recovery.
River in Recovery
The launch comes as advocates argue the Anacostia has entered a new phase of recovery.
For decades, the river was considered among the nation’s most polluted waterways. Environmental groups say major investments, including DC Water’s Clean Rivers Project tunnel system, have dramatically improved conditions.
According to Sherard, the Anacostia previously experienced combined sewer overflows on roughly 86 days annually, or once every 4 days each year, releasing an average 2.4 billion gallons of stormwater mixed with sewage. He said the Anacostia tunnel has now prevented overflows for more than two years.
“We’re as close to swimmable as we’ve ever been,” Sherard said.
Williams said the monitoring network helps tell that story in a way residents can understand.
“What this system of sensors does on a daily basis is inform the question of, is the river swimmable? Is the river fishable?” he said. “People will be able to access that information in real time, virtually any time that they want.”
Beyond Recreation
The information could also help identify emerging problems before they become crises.
Betsy Nicholas, president of Potomac Riverkeeper Network, said the system’s upstream monitoring network could provide early warning of pollution events, harmful algal blooms or declining oxygen levels. The unified platform also allows organizations to combine information that was previously scattered across separate websites and databases. Nicholas said the recent Potomac spill demonstrated how vulnerable communities can be to upstream incidents and underscored the value of an early-warning system.
“Getting an early warning, looking upstream as well as in the local conditions, and then combining that with all the other data sources that are out there is huge,” she said.
Advocates envision uses well beyond recreation. The data can support scientific research, help teachers bring real-world river conditions into classrooms and provide evidence for environmental policy decisions. The system’s developers have made raw data publicly available for download by researchers, universities and students.
Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who attended the launch, said the tool could help residents better understand the impact of stormwater pollution and strengthen public support for continued investment in river restoration efforts.
“Having that real-time information about our river quality is really important,” Allen said. “It’s going to help us be able to bring more people out onto our water.”
Maintaining the Network
Organizers said the network was designed with long-term maintenance in mind. Water technology company Xylem donated the monitoring equipment and committed five years of maintenance supplies. The company is also providing annual grants to participating organizations such as the Anacostia Watershed Society as well as both the Anacostia and Potomac Riverkeepers to cover staff time, boat operations and routine maintenance. Environmental groups said maintaining the sensors has been built into their regular monitoring operations. Staff already conducting weekly water-quality work will inspect and calibrate the equipment, and backup sensors are available when units need servicing.
For Sherard, the significance of the project goes beyond technology.
Two years after canceling the planned river swim, Sherard said the goal is not simply to collect more data but to build public confidence in waterways that many Washington-area residents still view with suspicion.
“People want information,” he said. “They want to know what’s happening in the river.” On Wednesday, for the first time, they could pull out a phone and find out for themselves.
“This is a huge step,” Sherard said, “in getting us swimmable.”
