| Community Water Watch Program is sponsored by the Monroe County Health Department. Volunteer groups are encouraged to adopt a stream for two years as an effort to improve and sustain the quality of the waterways in our community. The team filing this report is composed of the following members of the League of Women Voters of the Rochester Metropolitan Area Natural Resources Committee: Chris Fredette, Peela Hooke, Ann Jones, and Joyce Pearson (team captain). The following report is an example of what their work entails. |
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The time is 10:15am. The day is January 19, 2000. The stream captain checks the themoneter outside the kitchen window, urging it into the double digits before the other three team members arrive within the quarter hour. For the previous handful of days the wind chill has been in the double digits on the wrong side of zero. There are misgivings on the part of all team members to wade into Irondequoit Creek under such conditions. But the team has comitted to perform a winter stream observation, one of its annual four. Soon half the team will be gone for winter trips. Today is the day. | |
| The team members arrive. Piles of wading boots, walking sticks, fanny packs, rag socks, and mittens take over the mudroom. Chairs come out from the kitchen as team members struggle into the layers, the final layer being the high top rubber waders. This last addition has a design flaw, needing a belt for securing the boot tops. By this time all boots are burried beneith many layers of down and polar fleece. Ropes are fetched and fastened, and the citizen scientists head for the creek. |
| At water's edge, the piled ice and snow obscure all sign of the streambank. Hiking sticks hack away at the fragile ice edge until a solid footing, inches thick, is achieved. The advance guard lowers herself from the ice shelf into the shallow flow. Measuring the stream width on this day and making the calculation of volume of water passing per second is impossible. But the temperature, depth and velocity measurements proceed in due course. An apple is dropped gently into the flow, and the seconds are counted as it bobs ten feet downstreem. |
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| Retreival of the fruit is done quickly, and hands return eagerly to
mittens. The team pauses, two in the water and two on the bank. The wind is calm, sky is blue, snow is diamonds. The day is declared a treat, as the team proceeds to the final step. A seine net lowers into the water, as a boot toe disturbs nine square feet of creek bottom. The contents rinse begrudingly into the collecting pan. Field guides, tweezers, teacups, and magnifying glasses soon frame the stream sample on the kitchen table. Macroinvertibrate diversity is once again confirmed. Waders return to storage, waiting for a certain day in April.
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