Nutrient and Sediment Concentrations, Yields, and Loads in Impaired Streams and Rivers in the Taunton River Basin, Massachusetts

Rapid development, population growth, and the changes in land and water use accompanying development are placing increasing stress on water resources in the Taunton River
Basin. An assessment by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection determined that a number of tributary streams to the Taunton River are impaired for a variety of beneficial uses because of nutrient enrichment. Most of the impaired reaches are in the Matfield River drainage area
in the vicinity of the City of Brockton. In addition to impairments of stream reaches in the basin, discharge of nutrient-rich water from the Taunton River contributes to eutrophication of
Mount Hope and Narragansett Bays. To assess water quality and loading in the impaired tributary stream reaches in the basin, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the
Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection compiled existing water-quality data from previous studies for the period 1997–2006, developed and calibrated a Hydrological
Simulation Program–FORTRAN (HSPF) precipitation-runoff model to simulate streamflow in areas of the basin that contain the impaired reaches for the same time period, and collected
additional streamflow and water-quality data from sites on the Matfield and Taunton Rivers in 2008. A majority of the waterquality samples used in the study were collected between 1999
and 2006. Overall, the concentration, yield, and load data presented in this report represent water-quality conditions in the basin for the period 1997–2008