Overview
What is Nitrate Watch?
Nitrate Watch is a crowd-sourced community science project that equips volunteers and partner organizations with nitrate test strips and empowers them to monitor their water, share their results, and advocate for solutions.
Nitrate Watch is run by the Izaak Walton League of America. Clean Wisconsin is a proud Nitrate Watch partner.
Take Action
Get Involved and Test Your Own Water
Anyone can sign up to receive a kit of 25 strips to test their own or their neighbors’ private wells, or any lake, stream or river they care about. These kits are completely free of charge. Once you run out of test strips, simply sign up for more!
Testing is easy and quick. Be sure to list Clean Wisconsin as your organization when you sign up so we can summarize the data from all around the state.
Things to Consider Before and After Testing
- Participants of Nitrate Watch who have a private well for drinking water are encouraged to use the nitrate test strips to give you an idea of contamination levels.
- The best times of the year to test your well water are when it is most likely to be unsafe. Statistically these times occur following a period of heavy snowmelt in early spring or during the hot stagnant time of late summer and early fall.
- Water quality can change over time! It is important that testing becomes a regular routine.
- If a contaminant is detected in your well, this result does not necessarily mean your health will be affected. However, we want to provide information on potential health risks you should be aware of. Please review our environmental health brief on nitrates in drinking water
- Please note that these test strips are not an official well test. If the strip reads levels above 10mg/L, you should test your water through a certified lab.
- Remember “All Data is Good Data,” including test results of zero!
View a short how-to video about testing your water sample here. Request your testing kit today through the form on this page.
Once you’ve gotten your results, be sure to upload your findings to the Clean Water Hub.
