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Sound Rivers Water Quality Specialist Taylor Register was in the field this week, collecting a swath of samples for a sweeping project in Kinston.

Funded by a Center for Human Health and Environment mini-grant, Sound Rivers and Lenoir Community College’s science department are collaborating on “Kinston Clean Creeks,” a project that simultaneously supports student engagement and education, while also documenting pollution impacts to the creek and how those impacts may affect the community.

Taylor, along with Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop and Volunteer Coordinator Emily Fritz, has hosted several trainings over the past year through which students get an introduction to water quality — how water samples are collected, tested and the parameters defining a healthy waterway — and participate in a cleanout of the Adkin Branch trash trap and cleanup of its surrounding area.

Now Taylor’s embarked on collecting a full sweep of samples of the urban waterway, a Neuse River tributary that runs through the heart of Kinston.

“For this particular project, we are in charge of doing a full analysis of water-quality conditions, so that means E. coli, YSI data, DNA samples and a complete sweep of nutrient analysis,” Taylor said. “That also means we are collecting a ton of different samples for this one site.”

To collect all the samples and get them where they need to go is a challenge to tackle in one day: after collecting samples in Kinston, Taylor delivered the nutrient samples to the lab in Greenville, drove back to Sound Rivers’ New Bern lab to process bacteria samples, then packed up and shipped DNA samples to be analyzed.

“It was a full — and pretty hot — day of collecting, transporting and processing samples, but was also a great reason to get out of the office and into the field, which is always my preference,” Taylor laughed.

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