A busy couple of weeks!

Two weeks worth of activities to wrap up into one post:

June 16: Shannyn and I met with Kelly Jimenez and Patty Dietz to learn a little more about our project and how it ties in to the Chesapeake Bay restoration project.  We learned that the E. coli counts we are doing help Prince William County track where pollution may be entering the waterways.  These counts are also useful because every county needs to have a permit to discharge storm water, and this monitoring is one of the requirements for obtaining the permit.  What this also tells us is if there is any illegal dumping occurring along the waterways.  If the Department of Environmental Quality sees a hotspot from our citizen monitoring they will do an in-depth study in that area. 

With the passing of the Chesapeake Bay Act, more attention is being focused on sediment and nutrients than on bacterial contamination, but our work is integral in helping the state of Virginia determine TMDL for tributaries that will eventually become the source of drinking water for Prince William County, and ultimately end up in the Bay.  We learned a great deal about the new regulations and some new ideas for helping to protect the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. 

We also learned some great information on how development is affecting water pollution levels.  One of the major factors is that more development means less absorption of precipitation into the ground.  The runoff from parking lots and streets runs directly into area streams via the storm water drains.  Patty also educated us on some of the issues dealing with stormwater management, including the fact that older neighborhoods were built before any regulations came forth on stormwater management.

June19: PWSWCD had a booth at the Farmer's Market in Occoquan on Saturday.  We had a lot of fun teaching kids and their parents about ways to reduce water contamination using Kelly's fun Watershed Model.  We also took buckets of water from the Occoquan River and let kids test the water for dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, and clarity.   

We had a wide age range of participants, which was fun because it offered more of a challenge in trying to figure out how to talk about all of this science so they would understand.  Since we were dealing mostly with fairly young kids, we had to ask questions like: How to fish breathe under the water?  What if there isn't enough air to breathe?  What if the water is too hot or too cold?  By looking at this water do you think they can see where they are going?  Do they have enough air to breathe?  Do you think they could live if they had to swim in acid?  We got some pretty great answers and made some contacts with other people interested in water quality.  Overall, I'd rate the day 9 out of 10, and only because it was so blazing hot!

June 26: Macroinvertebrate Identification class held in Manassas.  Here I met Nancy Berlin, a Master Gardener and Save Our Streams coordinator.  SOS volunteer taught us how to identify different macroinvertebrates that live in area streams.

After the lecture, we got to try our hand at identifying many different bugs, all in various stages of life.  Somehow I can't seem to stay away from the microscopes, even on the weekends!  Eden and Kelly really got into the spirit of things, and we all had a great time.

My favorite bug was the Caddis Fly because of the interesting cases they make.  I remember as a kid, helping one of my 4H friends tie a caddis fly to be used as a fly fishing lure.  It is still my favorite strange little water creature!


The next few weeks are a little slow leading up to our next water collection July 13-14.  It will be a good time to do some research and write an article or two.

June Water Testing

Last week I went out and collected our twelve water samples for the month of June.  The water was much lower everywhere, and in some places there was grass growing right where we had sampled from last month!  Shannyn and Eden couldn't make it this time, so I roped my trusty fiance into coming along.  Two orange vests are better than one!

I noticed a lot more fish, frogs, tadpoles, and snails than the last time we were out.  It must have to do with the water being more shallow.  I scooped up a bunch of snails that were just floating on top of the water at one site, thinking they were dead.  I took pictures of them, and when I went to pour them back into the water, they had suctioned onto the plastic pitcher.  I guess they were just floating the river until I came along!  We saw a beautiful crane, but by the time I took the picture, it had flown just past the viewfinder...leaving me with a picture of a crane...the irony!  We also saw a gorgeous blue heron, lots of geese, and some other very pretty, very noisy, unidentified water birds.

After a marathon dash of collecting samples, we went back to Shannyn's house to set up the cultures.  She and Eden took over from there, and handled the incubation and coliform counts.  Not surprisingly, we saw more coliform contamination with this set.  The weather is getting warmer, the water is getting shallower, and the E. coli are living large!

On Wednesday this week Shannyn and I are going to visit the Prince William Soil and Water Conservation District, where I will finally meet Kelly Jimenez who has been leading us on this project.  Then on Saturday from 9am until noon we will all be down at Occoquan, volunteering to help interested folk test the water that comes from their river.  We will end the day with the 4th Annual Duck Splash, a fun event where rubber duckies are purchased and set loose along the Occoquan River (race begins at 1:30pm) in a race to the finish line!   

Does clear water mean clean water?

The results of our first sampling operation are in!  While we were out sampling, we were trying to predict which streams would have more contamination.  It was very interesting to see the results.  I'm wondering what will happen to the bacterial counts when the waters get warmer this summer.   Also, depending on rainfall this summer, I am wondering if we will see more contamination as the water supply gets lower, thus causing more animals to congregate in one location for their source of water. 

Although the Prince William Soil and Water Conservation District has only asked us to test for fecal bacteria, Shannyn, Eden, and I are too interested to stop there.  So, for the purpose of gaining more knowledge while I am in this practicum, we are also taking note of how polluted the stream is (one site had a soccer ball, baseball, various school supplies, many soda cans and water bottles, etc.), and how much algae is growing in the stream.  I am very excited to take a class on macroinvertebrate identification.  There are many creatures living in streams, and some of them are very sensitive to pollution.  By looking at the number of each species we find in the stream, we can get a good sense of how impaired the stream is, based on each critter's tolerance level.

Here are some more pictures of our stream water testing adventures!

I should have brought a chain saw!  But, I got the sample...and am still checking for ticks!

Clearly, some people don't take water quality monitoring as seriously as we do (see the bullet holes in the picture above?), but there's always room for a little goofing around!  The last picture is my favorite, showing a soon-to-be first grader how we test for "germs" in the water.

Our first glimpse into the murky waters...

Our first water samples were ready to be counted today.  There were lots of bacterial colonies, but not too much of the bad stuff (fecal bacteria).  I can't wait for tomorrow when the rest of the samples will be ready to count!

When we were sampling at this site (Location #3B), we were approached by some gentlemen working for VDOT.  They said they have been working to pull tons of debris out of the stream, which was clearly hindering the flow.  On one side of the bridge, the water wasn't deep enough for us to dip the bucket into, but on the other side the water was fairly deep, sluggish, and was covered in an oily sheen.  The dark blue/purple dots (3 of them) are the fecal coliforms.

Prince William County Stream Water Sampling May 2010

As part of the requirements to finish my Master's in Public Health, I am doing two internships dealing with my favorite subject: Water!  The first internship is in progress, as of yesterday, and has me traversing Prince William County with Shannyn Snyder and her daughter, Eden, to collect samples of stream water.  The testing locations were selected by the Prince William Soil and Water Conservation District in response to the 2008 assessment of Virginia waterways, which found that of the 15, 873 miles of waterways assessed, 66% of them were impaired.  This assessment identified a big problem for Prince William County, in which 100% of the waterways are impaired.

In order to comply with regulations set in the Clean Water Act, permissible levels of contaminants must be established for these impaired waters.  Our project is to assess the level of fecal contamination in select streams in the county.  We are testing 12 sites on a monthly basis, starting with our first sampling this week (May 11-12, 2010).

Collecting the samples has been a fun experience, and has allowed me to escape the basement office at my paying job for a few days.  Some of the streams are easily accessible from the road, but others are further back and require a little hiking.   At one site, there wasn't enough water at the location right under the bridge for us to collect a sample using our bucket-on-a-rope method, so I had to brave poison ivy, wild vines, and slippery grass to get down to the stream.  Once all samples were collected, we returned to our base and inoculated the Coliscan gel, poured the inoculated gel into sterile petri dishes, and set them in an incubator for 24 hours.

Waiting for results...stay tuned!

My research partner, Eden, showing us the water from an adopted stream behind a school: