What is Recreational Water Monitoring?
In Alberta, recreational water monitoring is carried out in order to assess the exposure risk of lake users to Enterococcus bacteria, and blue-green algae (cyanobacteria). Monitoring is coordinated by Alberta Health and Alberta Health Services at priority beach locations across Alberta, from late May to early September. Results of the monitoring may result in advisories posted to specific beach locations (Enterococcus), or for a lake as a whole (cyanobacteria).
With support from Alberta Health, ALMS has hired a Recreational Water Technician to coordinate volunteers to sample beaches throughout Alberta for public health targets as part of Alberta Health’s recreational water monitoring network. The Recreational Water Technician has a technical diploma or degree in environmental public health or a related field, and has experience with program coordination and management.
Sarah Klimchuk, Recreational Water Technician
Sarah graduated from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. Although she was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Sarah has been admiring the beauty and adventure within Alberta lakes and mountains throughout her life from Sylvan Lake to Sulphur Skyline Trail. Sarah began working with ALMS as an intern in 2021 for a research project with the University of Alberta, and took on the role of Recreational Water Technician in 2022. Sarah is excited to be back as Recreational Water Technician this summer and looking forward to working with Beach Operators, volunteers, and beach-goers this season to support and promote safe, healthy, and fun recreational water use!
Brandon Coull, Recreational Water Technician
Brandon’s interest in freshwater ecology began by spending his summers at Lac Sante fishing and boating. He always preferred spending his time outdoors and that led him to a career in biology. He went to the University of Alberta where he graduated with a B.Sc. specializing in ecology and conservation in 2022. Bandon focused his studies on freshwater communities and worked in a lab sampling streams across Alberta while in school. He is eager to start his job as a recreational water technician and is excited to see what the summer holds.
View the provincial Safe Beach Protocol here.
Enterococcus and Cyanobacteria Training Videos:
ALMS/AHS Recreational Water Monitoring Webinar:
The members of the steering committee will continue to play a strong role in facilitating and tracking implementation actions. This includes any actions they were responsible for, as well as tracking other committees and sector’s actions and progress made towards achieving the plan’s outcomes. Ongoing communication is essential to successful implementation and achieving outcomes, therefore a regular reporting mechanism could be set up in order to provide regular evaluation of the plan.
Reporting is an essential component of any watershed management planning and implementation process. There are two main types of reporting that should be shared with stakeholders on a regular basis: implementation reporting & effectiveness reporting.
There is no limit to the number or types of lake management actions, but they typically fall into the categories on the right.
Helpful resources
The development of a lake watershed management plan provides the guidance needed to implement activities, but the plan cannot be static. Monitoring the performance of your management actions is essential to understanding whether your goals have been met, and whether further actions are needed. Monitoring and evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of a lake watershed management plan allows assessment of progress towards the goals and objectives of the plan, identification of problems and opportunities, and a collection of critical information required when performing a 5 or 10 year review of the plan.
What has the monitoring results of the plan and of the indicators shown? Is there a need to modify the plan? It is important that the lake watershed management plan does not just sit on a shelf. Information gaps should be addressed, action items need to be managed, completed, and evaluated to best address the needs of the lake. Always keep in mind the vision: if the actions taken are not bringing the lake closer to that vision, then the plan needs to be modified. Consider updating both the state of the watershed and the lake watershed management plans at regular intervals to make sure that the actions taken were achieving the desired outcomes and to evaluate what work still needs to be done.
Once a plan has been approved by all affected sectors and officially endorsed and released by the steering committee, then implementation can begin in full. Action projects can be large and comprehensive, or made smaller by staging projects over time or into modules that can be tackled one at a time. Fundraising is an issue that many community groups may find intimidating, but experience with programs such as the Pine Lake Restoration Program (see 
This graphic describes how the various committees and groups will work and interact together. The circle size depicts the approximate number of people involved, and the circles overlapping indicates that some individuals may reside in all of the circles and participate in multiple committees as part of the planning process. The technical committee is shown as an arrow, indicating that it is independent and has relatively few people, and yet it interacts with all of the groups. This graphic may look different depending on the lake and the people involved, and a detailed structure should be agreed upon and described in the plan’s Terms of Reference (Step 6).
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