BETHEL – Armed with a $15,000 grant, the Androscoggin River Watershed Council is seeking volunteers to help monitor water quality on the 170-mile-long river that flows through New Hampshire and Maine.

“Logistically, it’s pretty challenging,” Barbra Barrett, coordinator of the council’s new Water Quality Monitoring Program, told 30 people attending Wednesday’s Androscoggin River Watershed Conference at The Bethel Inn’s Conference Center.

“We want to get as much data as we can for untested parts of the river other than Gulf Island Pond” in Auburn, Barrett said.

Using the grant, the council bought four testing kits that cost $2,000 each.

Things to be measured this year included acidity, dissolved oxygen, temperature and turbidity, she said.

Regarding E coli bacteria, the council intends to work with wastewater discharge plants.

They won’t, however, be testing for mercury deposition.

For more information, phone Barrett at 824-0739 or visit www.avcnet.org/arwc/.