Overall, is water quality in the Study Unit improving or getting worse?
Because the just completed cycle of study was the first for the Great and Little Miami River Basins area, we dont have much trend information at this point. Continued monitoring of the area over the coming years will hopefully reveal such trends. From some of our examination of past data from other sources, however, we can see a couple areas of improvement. For one, the makeup of the fish community has changed slightly in the past decade or so in a way that suggests an improvement in water quality; but there are still far fewer species today than were reported for area streams in the early days of settlement (More information about fish tissue analyses and results is available in a report by Stephanie Janosy at http://oh.water.usgs.gov/reports/wrir/wrir02-4305.pdf ). Also noted has been a substantial decrease in phosphorus in the Great Miami River, which probably reflects the combined effects of improved treatment of wastewater, lower phosphate content of dishwashing and laundry deterg
