Volunteers Brave Weather to Test Water

by Fran Snedeker, Volunteer Water Monitor

(June 7, 2003) Recently, it’s been “Water, water everywhere,…” But what do we really know about the “drops we drink”? To help us learn more, a band of local residents has volunteered for the Westchester County Citizen's Volunteer Monitoring Program (WCCVMP).

That’s why last Saturday a group of us stood in the rain on the bank of a tributary in Mamaroneck Village. Included were Larchmont Village volunteers Emily Beck, Lesleigh Forsythe, Geoff Young, and this reporter, Sheldrake Environmental Center Board member Steve Mitsch and his daughter Sasha, plus several people who will serve elsewhere in the County.

We had previously spent two evenings indoors at the Sheldrake Environmental Center for the classroom phase of the training under the direction of the County’s WCCVMP coordinator, Karis Tenneson. In the course of those hours she was able to convince even the “chemistry phobic” among us that we were capable of becoming proficient Volunteer Water Monitors. We learned that the purpose of the project is tri-fold:

• Create a historical baseline of water quality information throughout Westchester County.
  
• Connect communities with their water resources through education and hands-on involvement.
  
• Allow public access to water quality monitoring information for educational purposes.

To this end the Westchester County Planning Department has scheduled training sessions April through July at ten locations scattered from Yonkers to Cross River. By Saturday the local trainees had become acquainted with the comprehensive website for the Water Monitoring Program and the contents/purpose of the extensive chemical testing kit. The group learned about ‘riffles’ and the definition of a "riparian zone." Karis also imparted a healthy dose of enthusiasm for the program. With the help of her detailed training manual, the volunteers were ready to work as a team to test water for chlorides, pH level, dissolved oxygen, alkalinity, phosphates and more.

One team member read the directions in a loud voice (to overcome effects of leaf-blowers, passing trains, and screaming fire engines). Two others tromped into the stream measuring width and depth, scooping up water for chemical tests and mud for examination of macroinvertebrates (also known as “water critters”), and dropping a cork into the water to calculate current speed. Others poured the water samples into test tubes, added the appropriate chemicals and determined, with the help of the sophisticated portable equipment in the testing kits, the chemical and physical characteristics of the stream.

The other key member of the team recorded all this information on the prepared data-sheets, which on Saturday were rapidly saturated with rain. Had this been a real monitoring session, the recorder would have uploaded the data to the County’s website upon returning home. The volunteers survived – and even professed to enjoy – the training, despite the adverse conditions.

And now the team is prepared for weekly monitoring sessions at the real site, on the stream just below the Larchmont Reservoir. The data to be uploaded to the website each week throughout the summer will become part of the countywide database compiled by 10-20 other teams of volunteers. Because the database is interactive, all the data collected will be accessible to interested members of the public, including public officials.

The program, funded through the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, is being unrolled Countywide as part of an ambitious initiative to get the public involved in protecting the quality of all our water resources. Whether it is used as a source of drinking water, for recreational purposes, wildlife habitat, industrial uses, transportation, or even sport fishing, water is important to our quality of life. The database of knowledge to which the volunteers are contributing is considered pivotal for future public policy concerning water use.

Anyone over the age of 14 who finds the prospect of becoming a Volunteer Water Monitor appealing may contact project coordinator Karis Tenneson for more information at krt1@westchestergov.com or (914) 995-4407.

Fran Snedeker, a 16-year resident of Larchmont, who has come to treasure the spiritual and recreational joy to be derived from the Long Island Sound, managed to avoid throughout her academic career any exposure to chemistry. Her exposure to the science through the WCCVMP training might make her a “ believer” in chemistry despite herself.