The Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna American Heritage River has received a $400,000 grant to establish the first real-time water quality monitoring in the watershed to facilitate environmental assessment and cleanup strategies in the watershed.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is awarding the funding to the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority and the Pennsylvania Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Consortium. The project will be known as RiverNet, short for Real-Time Internet Visualization and Environmental Reporting Network.

"RiverNet will allow us to track the impact of acid mine drainage and combined sewer overflows in our region in real time. This will give us a comprehensive overview of these problems and be a great help and first step in cleaning them up," Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski said. "I want to thank the American Heritage River steering committee, Chairman Russ Singer of the Sanitary Authority, the staff of the authority, and Dr. Dale Bruns and the GIS Consortium for thinking creatively and working together on this grant."

Dr. Bruns, a Wilkes University professor, is president of the consortium, which is jointly administered by King's College and Wilkes University in conjunction with academic, public and private partners.

The RiverNet grant will pay for using state-of-the-art real-time water quality instruments to characterize environmental conditions in the Susquehanna River and its tributaries.

Alex Rogers, the Navigator for the Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna Watershed explained that the project will also support the use of GIS technology to rank and select the most ideal locations to monitor water quality.

"This constant flow of information will enable us to target specific areas of the river for remediation work, specifically with regard to sewafe outflows," Rogers said, noting that the water quality monitoring is an essential first step in isolating the biggest sources of contamination, a process that is critical in terms of applying for and obtaining funding to clean the river.

The data will be displayed visually on the Internet the water quality and land use patterns in the 1,800-square-mile watershed. GIS allows massive amounts of disparate data to be stored in computer systems and then processed in such a way that the data is visualized in thematic maps which are easier to understand and use.

"This new funding will also pay for environmental education and public outreach activities, including workshops and an innovative real-time component that will allow the public to view frequently updated information on the Internet," Congressman Kanjorski said.

Congressman Kanjorski has previously obtained $2.94 million for the consortium to perform its work on a comprehensive master plan for environmental cleanup and economic development in the watershed, which includes portions of Luzerne, Northumberland, Montour, Columbia, Sullivan, Schuylkill, Lackawanna, Wayne, and Susquehanna counties.

Once the RiverNet project is under way, real-time water quality data will be publicly available on the Web sites for the Pennsylvania GIS Consortium and the Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna American Heritage River Initiative.