This report is a summary of the near-real-time water quality-monitoring project conducted by a consortium of interested parties in the greater Minneapolis area. It was funded by an EPA program known as EMPACT (Environmental Monitoring, Public Access, and Community Tracking). In 1996, President Clinton directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create the EMPACT program to bring people time-relevant environmental information they could understand and use every day. To make EMPACT more effective, EPA is partnering with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Department of Interior (DOI), and the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR). EMPACT is a new approach to working with communities to collect, manage, and present environmental information. Currently, environmental information projects have been initiated in 61 of the designated 86 EMPACT-designated metropolitan areas. The report titled: Delivering Timely Water Quality Information to you Community; The Lake-Access Minneapolis Project, is a how-to manual designed to allow other communities to implement the tools and techniques developed by the Minneapolis project, and to share in the experience.

"September 2000."

Provides step-by-step information on how to develop a program to provide time-relevant water quality data to a community, using the Lake Access Project in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota area as a model.