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Linda Green, Program Director Linda Green is a research associate in the URI Department of Natural Resources Science and is the program director of Watershed Watch, a RI Cooperative Extension Water Quality Program. She received a BS in natural resources science and an MS in resource chemistry from URI. Green is a 1999 recipient of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Merit Award for her work in volunteer water quality monitoring. |
Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a city girl or,
more accurately, a suburb girl. I grew up on the outskirts of New York
City. The only backyard "ponds" were heavily chlorinated and
painted aqua blue. After graduating from URI, I married into a family
that had owned forested land and part of Yawgoo Pond for many years.
What a beautiful pond it was. Yawgoo Pond,
in South Kingstown and Exeter, covers 140 acres, is kidney-shaped, and
approximately 30 feet deep. Just a handful of homes and seasonal camps
have been built there. Surprisingly, since the late 1970s, this inland
pond has been home to a flock of seagulls. There have also been periods,
particularly following heavy rains, when the pond "greens up"
with algae blooms.
In the mid-1980s, little was known about
many of the water bodies in the Pawcatuck watershed. However, a new organization,
the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association (WPWA), had just been formed
by area residents concerned about the water quality of the watershed.
There was also talk about volunteer monitoring, or training citizen scientists
to monitor water quality. The URI Watershed Watch program was formed to
address these concerns. It resides in the Department of Natural Resources
Science and is part of the University's Cooperative Extension Water Quality
Program. I became the Yawgoo Pond monitor and then the program coordinator.
Volunteer water quality monitoring is a
recent phenomenon: the first statewide lake monitoring programs started
in 1973 in Minnesota, Maine, and Michigan. By 1985, the Chesapeake Bay
and Rhode Island's salt ponds had estuary monitoring programs.
(See Ingredients for a Successful Program)
Who becomes a volunteer monitor? Monitors
include senior citizens, mid-life adults, youth under 18, and a small
percentage of college-aged participants. A quarter of the original 25
volunteers and nearly 250 others are now with the URI Watershed Watch
Program. They monitor more than 110 sites including lakes, ponds, rivers,
streams, salt ponds, and estuaries in Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Why do people volunteer? They monitor because
they care, are concerned, want to make a positive contribution, or just
like being on the water. Some monitor because it justifies their fishing,
others as a family activity. Some monitor to document something gone wrong,
others to prevent something from going wrong. They have become watershed
stewards.
In 1988, the original URI Watershed Watch
volunteers, sponsored by the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association, found
generally good water quality conditions in the watershed. Yawgoo Pond
ranked in the middle. Less than a year
later, in 1989, a massive algae bloom turned Yawgoo Pond the color and
consistency of pea soup from August to November (See figure). In 1990,
the bloom started in early June and worsened as summer progressed. Downstream
Barber Pond experienced the same conditions. Significantly, no other monitored
location in the watershed experienced a similar decline in water quality.
Shoreline residents became concerned, as
did the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association. It was unlikely that the
handful of homes on Yawgoo Pond were responsible for the phosphorus that
was feeding the algae bloom. So we looked upstream. The upstream source,
Shickasheen Brook, was sampled and high levels of phosphorus were found.
The phosphorus content was not as high as that in urban rivers, but was
high compared to nearby Mud Brook, which also feeds Barber Pond. The monitoring
data from throughout the watershed were critical in providing additional
baseline information.
This information prompted the RI Department
of Environmental Management (RI DEM) to meet with the community and conduct
its own investigation. Their data on phosphorus levels were strikingly
similar to the Watershed Watch data. Two shellfish processing plants that
made stuffed clams were upstream. Clamshells are made of calcium phosphate,
the liquid inside is high in phosphorus, and a concentrated phosphorus
solution was used to scrub the shells. The phosphorus entered the nearby
stream and flowed to Yawgoo and Barber Ponds. Perhaps it was the clams
and their wastes that attracted the seagulls.
One shellfish plant was active, the other
had a number of above-ground, open-sewage lagoons holding phosphorus-laden
wastes that seeped into the ground. An investigation led to the closure
of the active plant. Yawgoo Pond began recovering. By the next year (1991),
phosphorus levels had decreased by one-third, algae showed a sixfold decrease,
and water clarity had improved dramatically.
The seagulls no longer enjoy Yawgoo Pond.
But the osprey, the fishers, the Friday night fishermen, and a new generation
of Yawgoo Pond kids sure do.
