Streamkeepers of Clallam County recently received $2,000 from the Mountaineers Foundation to help consolidate the Clallam County Water Resources database.

The database was created in 2000 to incorporate water data both from Streamkeepers’ monitoring and other data projects going back to 1986. It currently contains data from more than 50 projects, involving more than 100,000 hours of data-gathering effort.

As Streamkeepers began to perform special monitoring projects funded by other entities, the database structure began to show its limitations. From 2008-2011, Streamkeepers staff, volunteers and advisors worked on a new database design to incorporate a broader variety of data, simplify data submission to the Washington state Department of Ecology’s database, and enable explicit portrayal of Quality Control tests and data qualifiers, thus making data quality transparent.

Before Streamkeepers staff had a chance to consolidate the two databases, however staffing was cut. The Clallam County Water Resources database remains in two pieces and data retrieval is a laborious process.

The grant will help Streamkeepers begin to bring the two parts together again, which will enable improved access to the data and positively influence environmental planning and management outcomes for Clallam County and Puget Sound.