NEW ORLEANS – Pontchartrain Conservancy has created an Android and iOS app that will provide the public with the environmental nonprofit’s weekly water quality sampling results. The Lake&Coast app will be available for download starting this August in celebration of National Water Quality Month.
“Since 2000, Pontchartrain Conservancy has kept the public up to date with the latest water quality conditions around Lake Pontchartrain and in our basin through EPA-approved testing methods,” said the organization’s water quality program director Brady Skaggs in a release. “We’re thrilled to provide this data to the community with the click of a button through the Lake&Coast app. Because the information is easily accessible, citizens can make more informed decisions when it comes to swimming or boating and to have greater insight into the status of areas throughout the basin.”
App users will learn about bacteria indicators, salinity, water temperature, visibility and other water quality parameters at 12 recreational sites around the Lake Pontchartrain Basin. They also can stay updated on advisories issued for specific sites and get reports about rain runoff, which affects water quality in the lake and its tributaries.
The testing locations are the Laketown Boat Launch, the Bonnabel Boat Launch, Old Beach, Pontchartrain Beach, Bayou St. John, the New Canal Lighthouse, Seabrook Harbor, Tchefuncte River, the Bogue Falaya River at Tammany Trace, Bayou Castine, Fontainebleau Beach and Northshore Beach.
For more than 30 years, Pontchartrain Conservancy (formerly the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation) has worked to restore and preserve Lake Pontchartrain as a “healthy economic and recreational resource for the region.” In 2006, the lake was declared clean and safe for recreation upon its removal from the Environmental Protection Agency’s impaired water bodies list.
For more information about the Lake&Coast app release and an accompanying photography contest, visit scienceforourcoast.org.
