Come Help Your Lakes -- Be a Water Quality Monitor!

Ah, spring! Tens of thousands of geese are on Lake Herman, the runoff streams are burbling along, and lots of little organisms are wriggling about under that stubbron ice. It's time to think about water quality!

Last year the East Dakota Water Development District used some grant money to support bacteria monitoring at various sites in the Big Sioux watershed. We took part here on Lake Herman and found some high E. coli readings near the golf course and Camp Lakodia. (See updates and a summary on the 2007 Dakota Water Watch project here.) This year, EDWDD, with support from various organizations like the Interlakes Water Quality Committee and the Brant Lake Improvement Association, is sponsoring continued bacteria monitoring and soe other water quality activities... and we need volunteers!

If you'd like a good excuse to get out on the lakes and do some amateur science to help the environment in the process, come to our volunteer training meeting tomorrow (that's Saturday, the 15th!) from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the DSU Science Center. EDWDD's Jeanne Fromm will conduct the training and hand out equipment (yes, you get gear! Everybody loves gear!).

To give you an idea of the kind of work you might do, last year I made about ten trips out onto Lake Herman from April through October. I'd hop in the kayak (or the canoe, when Jeanne came along) and paddle out my two monitoring sites. I took water samples and recorded weather and water conditions (including any creatures -- always exciting to be able to mention turtles on the data sheet!). Then I would deliver the water samples to the minilab at Robert Todd's place on Round Lake for analysis (a good excuse to take the bicycle or the scooter for a spin).

The project was fun, and we got good data. So come be a junior scientist with us this year! it's good for you, it's good for the lakes.