Meet a Monitor: Laura DeGolier

Author: Heather Wilson, Save Our Streams Coordinator

After more than 20 years of volunteer water quality monitoring, Laura DeGolier knows her rivers like friends.

In 2006, Laura discovered water quality monitoring. She was looking for a way to get outdoors, unwind from a stressful job and explore the natural areas that were more interesting to her than manicured parks. She found an opportunity to get involved with Water Action Volunteers (WAV), a program managed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and dove in headfirst.

As a WAV volunteer, Laura monitors five streams in the Rock River and Fond Du Lac River Watersheds monthly between April and November each year. With her team of volunteers, Laura measures parameters including dissolved oxygen, temperature and turbidity, which are reported to a state database where they can be used by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Laura’s team has also added an annual habitat assessment and a “critter count” (a survey of aquatic macroinvertebrates) to their sampling.

In her tenure as a water monitoring volunteer, Laura has seen lots of things change. The equipment used to monitor, the staff liaisons she interacts with, and the volunteers she works alongside – all have gone through changes in the past 20 years. Laura’s role as a volunteer has also evolved. She now oversees the teams of volunteers who monitor her stream sites, coordinating sampling outings, managing their equipment, and sending out newsletters to keep all her team members informed.

Another evolution in Laura’s water monitoring journey is the addition of Nitrate Watch. In April of 2026, Laura learned about the Izaak Walton League of America’s Nitrate Watch program, which sends free nitrate test kits to volunteers across the country. Laura signed up, got her kit in the mail and was off to the river. She decided to add Nitrate Watch monitoring to her team’s monthly stream monitoring. The program adds a new parameter (nitrate-N) to their sampling regimen, which helps the team track the impact of agricultural runoff on their streams. The test strips provide instantaneous results that can be quickly and simply visualized on the Clean Water Hub, which has made it easy for Laura to include Nitrate Watch data in the newsletters she sends to her volunteers.

Through Laura’s many years as a water quality monitoring volunteer, she’s come to see the rivers she monitors as living entities with a sort of personality of their own. As she writes at the closing of her newsletters, the river is “a dynamic force of life.” By collecting monthly data, Laura has observed and documented how these rivers change and evolve with time. Her goal is to collect data to establish a public record of the health of these living waterways, and to inspire a greater respect for her rivers and an understanding of their plight.

It is this perspective that has motivated Laura to take steps to speak up and shine a light on the rivers she knows and loves. Laura will speak about her monitoring and share data with anyone who asks. She has invited state senators, county board supervisors and a local town chairman to visit the stream with her, bringing more attention to the beauty and vulnerability of waterways and the importance of water monitoring.

When you know something well, you protect it. For Laura, a monthly pilgrimage to monitor stream sites has cultivated a deep respect and inspired decades of volunteerism and advocacy. She hopes that sense of care is contagious, spreading to the volunteers she works with, the community members she talks to and the local leaders who visit her streams.