Smith Mountain Lake Association (SMLA) teams up with the Virginia Save Our Streams Program and the Blue Ridge Foothills and Lakes Chapter of the Virginia Master Naturalist Program to conduct water quality monitoring on key streams flowing into the lake. 

Twice a year, certified volunteer monitors collect and identify freshwater aquatic macroinvertebrates, the critters that live on the bottom of a stream.The macroinvertebrates gathered are classified as pollution-tolerant or pollution-intolerant, and the relative balance between those two categories helps determine how healthy the water is in a given stream. 

The stream health  scoring scale runs from 0 to 12, with scores of 0-7 being unacceptable, 8 unable to determine (i.e., gray area), and 9-12 acceptable. Factors like weather events, temperature, and insect hatches can affect scores, each site is monitored twice a year and the results are averaged.

The data collected is entered into the Virginia SOS database and used by the State Department of Environmental Quality to assess the overall quality of Virginia’s streams and rivers and used to identify deficiencies that may need to be addressed. The SOS data from streams feeding into Smith Mountain Lake complements the nationally recognized SMLA/Ferrum College Water Quality Monitoring Program (WQMP).