News

Water Watchers across the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds gathered online this week to talk water quality on the waterways.

“We had a good amount of people attend, which was great because we had lots of exciting updates to share,” said Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Katey Zimmerman. “We talked about all we’ve accomplished in just over a year of this program — 10 trainings, over 100 sites claimed, more than 200 reports submitted — and went over some of their data from those submitted reports.”

Katey said that 74% of the reports submitted outlined no issues at sites, though the most common issue reported was litter.

“We discussed the possibility of adding in some questions to the survey asking if the trash is accessible and if they’d be willing to collect it/if they need supplies or extra assistance to do that,” she said.

The highlight of the meeting was a discussion about what’s to come for Water Watch: “we will be incorporating the testing kits soon! We are currently working to train a pilot group on the test kits and gather feedback on what works best before we distribute the kits among all our volunteers,” Katey said.

Since the citizen-science-based program was launched, the focus for volunteers has been the collection of observational water-quality data at their chosen sites. The test kits will add an element of quantitative data in addition to observational.

“Through a pretty simple process that was created by the Community Water Network, volunteers will be able to test for pH, flourides, phosphate and nitrates, and the kits will also include a Secchi disk to measure turbidity,” Katey said.

Sound Rivers’ Water Watch has absorbed the East Carolina University Water Resources Center’s program, which was funded by a National Science Foundation Coastlines and People grant that has since expired.

“The grant ended, but the Water Resources Center wanted to keep the program alive, and since we started Water Watch, we’ve wanted to do more quantitative data, so it made sense for us to join forces,” Katey said.

Included in the meeting’s news was that East Carolina University biology and chemistry major Georgia Harris will be signing on as a dedicated Water Watch intern for Sound Rivers.

“She’s really passionate about community engagement and seems really excited about the Water Watch program,” Katey said. “Plus, she’ll get course credit for her work with Water Watch.”

Georgia’s role as intern will include reviewing all Water Watch reports as they come in and flagging any issues, communicating with volunteers and assisting with the test kits roll-out.

“We’re also planning to do an annual report that displays the data that our wonderful volunteers have compiled throughout the year, and Georgia will be a huge help in compiling all that data,” Katey said.

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