Water Quality Monitoring Stations Cleaning Up Indian River Lagoon

Officials will have a better idea of how healthy the Indian River Lagoon is in real time, thanks to five new water quality monitoring stations that were installed Friday.

The health of the lagoon - stretching along Florida's east coast from Volusia County to Martin County - has been a concern over recent years after toxic algae blooms wiped out 50,000 acres (60 percent) of seagrass, according to the Associated Press.

The sensors will collect data on temperature, salinity and plankton, as well as tests levels of the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus - believed to be the lagoon's worst problems, WMFE reported.

To study and analyze the water, researchers used to collect samples by hand, but with this new system scientists will be able to have a continuous stream available.

Being able to monitor the lagoon's condition in real time, David Hornsby of the St. Johns River Water Management District says, is a significant milestone.

"We used to come out here and sample every other week. So two sample points a month," he explained. "We now get 24 points a day. So it increases our resolution and helps our understanding of how things change particularly in the nighttime, how this system responds at nighttime."

The $1 million project will hopefully not only tell scientists what health problems the lagoon faces, but help them come to a solution as well, according to Maine News. As DEP Secretary Herschel T. Vinyard Jr. says, "We are not going to study this lagoon problem to death."

Monitors were installed in Mosquito Lagoon, Veterans Memorial Bridge in Titusville, US 192 Causeway in Melbourne, SR 520 Causeway and 17th Street Bridge in Vero.

All the data collected will be available live on the District's website: webapub.sjrwmd.com.