Monitoring and protecting the quality of environmental waters is of major concern today. Our ability to effectively monitor the aquatic environment is essential due to the increasing pressure on the environment from pollution, global climate change and the fact that water is an increasingly scarce natural resource. Microfluidic technology has potential as a solution to the increasing demand for environmental monitoring; leading to the development of compact autonomous instruments for in situ continuous monitoring of remote locations over long deployable lifetimes. The objective of this research is to produce autonomous chemical sensing platforms with a price performance index that creates a significant impact on the existing market focusing on a detection platform for nutrients. The goal is to integrate polymer actuators valves into the microfluidic chip, to drive down the overall cost.