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History

Maine distinguishes itself nationally with its well established and highly respected Biological Monitoring Program that focuses on biological endpoints to guide our water quality assessment program and drive management decisions. Historically, water quality policy has relied upon performance-based standards to establish allowable pollutant loads, monitoring requirements, and enforcement actions when regulating specific activities such as wastewater discharges . These standards focused on individual chemical pollutants and were designed to alleviate distinct problems, such as controlling toxic substances, reducing waterborne pathogens and maintaining dissolved oxygen levels. Although these standards brought us a long way toward improvement in water quality, their exclusive use became inadequate because they were not designed to address the impacts of pollution on aquatic life. Recognizing these limitations, Maine initiated a statewide Biological Monitoring Program in 1983, looking at the macroinvertebrate communities found in rivers and streams. See the Why section for more information on the use of biological monitoring techniques.

In 1986 a revised water quality classification law was passed, which requires that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) consider the ecological health of the resident biological community when assigning water quality classifications. These new impact-based standards require that defined levels of biological integrity be maintained. This tiered classification system recognizes the necessity of having waters of different quality, including pristine recreation-oriented waters and waters of lesser quality for economic and social needs, and allows flexibility in how the standards are achieved. See the table below for a description of the aquatic life standards for waters under this classification system, and see the Glossary for definitions of terms used in this table. For a discussion of how Maine developed and implements its tiered water quality law, see the Maine TALU Implementation Case History.

In the late 1990s, the Biological Monitoring Program was expanded to include macroinvertebrates in freshwater wetlands and algae in wadeable rivers, streams and freshwater wetlands. For more information on our sampling methods, visit our Sampling and Analysis page.

In 2003, the State Legislature adopted Rule 579 “Classification Attainment Evaluation Using Biological Criteria for Rivers and Streams" (PDF). Rule 579 codifies how the Biological Monitoring Program collects and analyzes aquatic macroinvertebrate samples from rivers and streams. The Program uses a multivariate statistical model to determine if rivers and streams are meeting the aquatic life criteria associated with their assigned legislative water quality class (AA/A, B, or C). Similar assessment tools for wetland macroinvertebrate and algae samples are currently under development and will be incorporated into Maine 's water quality standards.

For more information on our stations and to see sampling results, visit our Data and Maps page. The Program has established several partnerships with other organizations that enable us to continue to expand our efforts. For a list of our partners and their contact information, visit the Contacts page.