In order to maintain the recreational use of the beach at the Sharon Creek Conservation Area and gain the interest and involvement of the area landowners, the first year of the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority's Rural Beaches Program endeavored to achieve the following objectives: 1. Upon the selection of the most suitable beach within the LTVCA boundary, conduct water quality monitoring of the beach and the contributing watershed. The purpose of the sampling regime is to locate the areas of both high faecal bacteria and high chemical nutrient concentrations within the study area. 2. Produce a private landowner and rural residence questionnaire in order to inventory rural land use activities which could be contributing bacterial pollution to the selected beach and watershed. 3. From the above information, identify and rank livestock operations as to their potential to cause faecal bacterial contamination of the selected beach and watershed. 4. Establish a database to maintain a list of landowners who participated in the livestock operation assessment survey and to document the water quality problems related to bacterial sources within the watershed. This base of data will aid future monitoring of the watershed and implementation of remedial measures.