The Quality Assurance (QA) program ensures that environmental sample collection and analysis activities which the Division undertakes, funds, or uses to make decisions are properly collected, analyzed, and are of sufficient scientific quality for its intended purpose. It also provides training, guidance development, and audits to ensure that collected environmental data is precise, accurate, representative, complete, and, where applicable, legally defensible. An important part of this is providing guidance on the development of Quality Assurance Project Plans (QAPP) used by staff, local water monitoring agencies, tribal water monitoring staff, citizen monitoring groups and industry when performing water quality monitoring in Alaska. The QA program makes certain that water quality data collected can be used to determine the quality of Alaska’s surface and sub-surface waters, if restoration actions are effective, and if a permit is in compliance.

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