The Quinnipiac River Watershed Based Plan identifies priority issues for the watershed and provides recommendations to address them.
Although advances and upgrades in wastewater treatment have improved water quality over the past several decades, the water quality of much of the Quinnipiac River and its tributaries remains poor as a result of elevated levels of bacteria and impairments to aquatic life.
A Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) (i.e., a “pollution budget”) developed for the Quinnipiac River and its major tributaries by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CTDEEP) in 2008 indicates that bacteria loads must be reduced by over 90% for the impaired segments to meet water quality standards and once again support contact recreation.
The plan recommendations include watershed-wide recommendations that can be implemented throughout the Quinnipiac River watershed, targeted recommendations that are tailored to issues within specific subwatersheds or areas, and site-specific recommendations to address issues at selected sites that were identified during the watershed field inventories. Recommendations are classified according to their timeframe and overall implementation priority.
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