Citizen Scientists and URI: Partners for Watershed Protection
Linda Green, Program Director
URI Watershed Watch
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. 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.