Delivering Water Quality Monitoring Data to the Public: Lessons Learned from a Pilot in Baltimore Harbor
Citation:
Mclean, E., Marilyn R. Buchholtz Ten Brink, J. Sayles, L. Power, Jonathan D. Essoka, AND S. Rachko. Delivering Water Quality Monitoring Data to the Public: Lessons Learned from a Pilot in Baltimore Harbor. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-23/371, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
An objective of federal, state, and local environmental management programs is to provide citizens with clean waters and the benefits associated with them. Communicating the importance of clean water to the public is often thought to help promote changes to behaviors and actions that improve water quality. Awareness of water quality problems is a likely prerequisite for communication and behavior change. This summary report presents an interdisciplinary research project that piloted a social science research approach to explore aspects of communication used by stewardship organizations around the issue of water quality monitoring, and water quality stewardship, in the Baltimore Harbor. To address this problem, we spoke with representatives from 39 organizations working on water quality related issues around Baltimore Harbor and used qualitative text analysis to understand the following: (1) how do different organizations communicate with their audiences, and others, about issues of water quality and/or other environmental concerns, (2) what are stewardship organizations’ perceptions about environmental outcomes, and (3) which communication mechanisms and messaging resonate most with targeted audiences. Our results improve how we understand different approaches used to determine the success of information delivery to the public and provide a pilot approach to determine the efficacy of educational initiatives in the Baltimore Harbor area. Our key findings are presented in this report as Lessons Learned that can inform and enable future communications about water quality monitoring, people’s understanding of nature’s benefits, and environmental stewardship. Lessons learned, and recommended practices, can inform communication strategies for stewardship organizations, regulators, policy makers and researchers in communicating with interested citizens. Lessons learned are presented in four key categories: (1) Messages used to communicate water quality; (2) Delivery mechanisms of water quality data; (3) Measuring the effectiveness of messaging approaches / environmental outcomes (indicators of success); and (4) Comparing the relative importance of water quality and environmental issues that people are concerned about. These results and application of the Lessons Learned will support future efforts to improve information delivery to stimulate public awareness, engagement, and action towards improving water quality in the Baltimore Harbor and can support existing State and Federal water programs, such as regional efforts to meet the Chesapeake Bay water quality restoration targets.
Description:
An objective of federal, state, and local environmental management programs is to provide citizens with clean waters and the benefits associated with them. Communicating the importance of clean water to the public is often thought to help promote changes to behaviors and actions that improve water quality. Awareness of water quality problems is a likely prerequisite for communication and behavior change; and it is with this need in mind that the City of Baltimore built the Baltimore Waterwheel in the Baltimore Harbor, which has indeed increased awareness. Between 2017 and 2019, the Village Blue project also provided continuous water quality data from in situ instruments. It has been difficult, however, to understand which communication mechanisms regarding water quality monitoring (and water quality in general) result in measurable behavioral and environmental change(s). To address this problem, we spoke with representatives from 39 organizations working on water quality related issues around Baltimore Harbor and used qualitative text analysis to understand the following: (1) how do different organizations communicate with their audiences, and others, about issues of water quality and/or other environmental concerns, (2) what their perceptions about environmental outcomes are, and (3) which communication mechanisms and messaging resonate most with targeted audiences. Our results improve how we understand different approaches used to determine the success of information delivery to the public and provide a pilot approach to determine the efficacy of educational initiatives in the Baltimore Harbor area. Our key findings are presented in this report as Lessons Learned that can inform and enable future communications about water quality monitoring, people’s understanding of nature’s benefits, and environmental stewardship. Lessons learned, and recommended practices, are organized into four key categories: (1) Messages used to communicate water quality; (2) Delivery mechanisms of water quality data; (3) Measuring the effectiveness of messaging approaches / environmental outcomes (indicators of success); and (4) Comparing the relative importance of water quality and environmental issues that people are concerned about. This work supports future efforts to improve information delivery to stimulate public awareness, engagement, and action towards improving water quality in the Baltimore Harbor and can support existing State and Federal water programs, such as regional efforts to meet the Chesapeake Bay water quality restoration targets.
URLs/Downloads:
Impact Statement Baltimore Lessons Learned (PDF, 1 pp, 216 KB, about PDF)Delivering Water Quality Monitoring Data Baltimore Lessons Learned (PDF, 57 pp, 4866 KB, about PDF)
Communicating Baltimore WQ Monitoring Fact Sheet (PDF, 2 pp, 498 KB, about PDF)