The City of Durham (hereafter “the City”) maintains an ambient water quality monitoring program as part of its National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. As part of the monitoring program, benthic macroinvertebrates communities are assessed at selected sites. The City is seeking services to support the assessment of these benthic macroinvertebrate communities in calendar years (CY) 2026, 2027, and 2028. This will include four required tasks to be completed annually. Additional sites may be sampled annually at the discretion of the City and are included as an optional task below. The four tasks required annually include: collection of benthic macroinvertebrates, completion of habitat assessments, taxonomic identification of collected specimens, and calculation of the biotic index score for each site. Field collections, habitat assessments, taxonomic identification, and biotic index calculations will be completed using methodology outlined in NCDWR Standard Operating Procedures for the Collection and Analysis of Benthic Macroinvertebrates, February 2016, V. 5.0. Field work will be limited to wadeable streams in and around the City. Benthic macroinvertebrates will be collected using following either the Full Scale or Qual4 protocols. After collection, the Contractor shall provide a report deliverable in the form of an electronic workbook, all preserved specimens, and field sheets.
