Project Goals

Blue Water Baltimore monitors bacteria levels in the Baltimore Harbor between the months of April and November. The program monitors 30 sampling sites for Enterococci bacteria, a recognized indicator of human sewage contamination of tidal waters and public health risk, on a bi-weekly basis during the sampling season. Lab results are usually available within 24 hours of sampling and are posted on the organization's bacteria monitoring website, as well as on signage in physical locations throughout the Baltimore Harbor watershed.

Web Technologies

ThinkShout developed this monitoring tool with Drupal 7.x. We used the Field Collection module to allow site administrators to quickly upload sampling results to a sampling location. The mapping interface was developed on top of Leaflet, an open source javascript library - and ultimately lead to our release of the Leaflet module for Drupal.

In addition to mapping sampling locations, this website leverages the Google Charts API to correlate bacteria levels with rainfall data - telling the story of how sewer overflows during heavy stormwater events affect the health and safety of local waterways.