StreamWatch Releases 2012-2014 Stream Health Report
Link to news report
By Brit Moorer
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (NEWSPLEX)
A group of stream watchers were out looking for bugs Thursday afternoon in order to find out if local waterways are healthy. It is a continued effort to make sure the Rivanna River watershed continues to improve.
With each spray of a water bottle, a team of volunteers is able to test the quality of local watersheds, specifically the Rivanna River. It’s water that will be waded in, used as a water source, and even a place millions organisms call home. Using a very tedious process, volunteers collect water samples and document what they find.
“If the organisms that should be in the rivers and streams are not there that means the ecological conditions are not fit enough for them to be there,” said David Hannah, the executive director of StreamWatch. Volunteers were out Thursday showing off their findings from their work over the last three years.
StreamWatch released its latest report on local stream health and the results are wavy. Sixty-four percent of the streams failed to meet the water quality standards for aquatic life compared to 69 percent last year. “By any measure I think that’s not adequate. I think we can do better and the community should do better, a better job of protecting our water resources,” said Hannah.
Overall, water quality hasn’t improved or declined but StreamWatch says it’s better to be safe than sorry. “If a storm event or a hurricane or something that denudes the landscape happens tomorrow there may be a lag tag before that effect shows up in how we sample in the streams”
So as people head out to start tubing or kayaking in the water, it’s important to know what’s going on in that water being splashed around in.