By: Sydney Zinner
Congratulations to our 2023-2024 AWWard Winners! Thank you all for your dedication, enthusiasm, and incredible contributions to the AWW Program. You are an integral part of our team!
Mullen & Debes Award for Monitor of the Year – Gabrielle (Gabby) Dunham
The Monitor of the Year Award bears the name Mullen and Debes in honor of three of our all-time most active volunteer monitors, Mike and Alice Mullen and Janne Debes. These volunteers top the list year after year. In 2023, the Mullens submitted 521 records, and Janne submitted 419. Historically, these monitors have submitted over 12,000 records!
Gabby was right behind them in 2023, submitting 183 data records that included results for ALL THREE data types – water chemistry, bacteriological, and stream biomonitoring! She sampled sites on six different waterbodies in Lee County including Parkerson Mill Creek, Chewacla Creek, and Nash Creek! Gabby became a certified monitor in February and March of 2023. The way she jumped right into monitoring is impressive!
Gabby has also become a wonderful proponent of Alabama Water Watch and encourages friends and AU students to get involved. Gabby is a lab tech for the Auburn University Plant Diagnostic Lab, located in the same building as AWW. We have enjoyed the opportunity to become friends with her over these past couple of years. Gabby spends much of her free time as a volunteer naturalist with several programs throughout Alabama. We appreciate Gabby’s enthusiasm for all things nature-related and for being part of the AWW Team!
Trainer of the Year – Mimi Fearn
The Trainer of the Year Award recognizes Volunteer Trainers who have shown outstanding dedication to AWW and have conducted the most workshops each year. In 2023 alone, Mimi conducted 31 workshops, and since going through her initial Training of Trainers Workshop in 2001, she has conducted over 180 workshops! This is the fifth year in a row Mimi has received this award – and for good reason!
Mimi has been an active part of AWW and her local group, the Dog River Clearwater Revival, which is based in Mobile, for over 25 years. Mimi was a geography professor at the University of South Alabama for many years, where she brought AWW into the classroom. She served as the president of DRCR for several years, and today she is their water monitoring coordinator. She has also played a major role in the revival and creation of multiple coastal AWW groups.
Mimi is one of our go-to-people when we need feedback or advice on many AWW topics including our recent transition to the R-CARD method for bacteria monitoring. We greatly appreciate her involvement with AWW and her effort to train others as community scientists.
Stonefly Steward Award – Jennie Powers
The Stonefly Steward Award recognizes individuals who have led high-quality stewardship efforts in connection with Alabama Water Watch. Because of their extreme sensitivity to pollution, stoneflies are used as key indicators of water quality when we conduct stream biomonitoring. Stoneflies are only present where stewardship has led to protection or restoration of a watershed resulting in high quality waters.
This year we recognized Jennie Powers as the first-ever Stonefly Steward Award recipient for her unique ability to use her specialized skills, knowledge, and experience to enhance AWW’s ability to encourage watershed stewardship.
Jennie co-created and illustrated the America’s Amazon infographic, and in doing so, she helped make it possible to spread the important message that “Alabama is home to amazing aquatic resources and biodiversity, and that it needs to be cared for” to thousands of people from all corners of the state and beyond. The infographic is displayed in Alabama Welcome Centers, classrooms, universities, museums, and social media feeds. It has increased the pride and appreciation citizens have for Alabama, which we feel confident is changing people’s attitudes about our waterways and encouraging them to take actions that promote their protection.
More recently, Jennie has again donated her time and talents through work with AWW data, sites, maps, and ArcGIS. She is helping to set AWW on a new path for how we can relate scientific information to our volunteers and the public. We are thankful for Jennie’s generosity with her time and talents!
Marty Schulman Biodiversity Guardian Award
The Schulman Biodiversity Guardian Award was inspired by and named after Marty Schulman, who was a founding member of the Watercress Darter Monitoring Program that integrated AWW monitoring into the protection of the endangered Watercress Darter. In Marty’s words: “Besides us humans, there’s a broad spectrum of aquatic and terrestrial life that share our clean water needs; so there’s a common requirement for clean water that doesn’t put human interests above the other critters that we live with.”
JJ Fortune is a teacher at Robertsdale High School who became involved with AWW through our NOAA-funded 4-H AWW Project, Exploring Pathogens in Our Waters. He has been conducting bacteriological monitoring of Silver Creek in Baldwin County with his students since 2021.
JJ was nominated by fellow educator Brittany Eames, who is also an amazing teacher. In the application, she highlighted how JJ has presented his students with unique and meaningful opportunities to engage with water monitoring and biodiversity in a hands-on and highly impactful way. The most notable example is their Living Shoreline Project which aims to measure and compare biodiversity and water quality along a natural shoreline, a shoreline held up by a bulkhead, and near oyster castles. During their field day at Pelicans Point on Weeks Bay, they emphasized the importance of water quality monitoring on estuaries to make decisions about the health of our ecosystems and watersheds.
Equally remarkable is the way JJ engages with his students. It is clear that the students respect JJ, look up to him, and enjoy learning under his leadership. JJ is inevitably making a lasting impact on the lives of these students, and on the water quality and biodiversity of coastal Alabama.
Eric Reutebuch Water Spirit Award – Dog River Clearwater Revival
The Eric Reutebuch Water Spirit Award is inspired and named after Eric Reutebuch, our former AWW Director, whose work at AWW has left a legacy. Eric was, and continues to be, an integral part of the AWW Program. This special award is reserved for a person, group, or organization who, like Eric, exemplifies a spirit of involvement, enthusiasm, and concern for water resources in Alabama and beyond, and who use their unparalleled love and passion for all things related to water to inspire others to become watershed stewards.
Dog River Clearwater Revival embodies the Water Spirit Award in every way. They strive to “create an environment where families, children, citizens, workers, and visitors work and play in a clean, safe, and accessible river.” DRCR members have strategically worked toward that goal for the past 30 years by investing time in educational outreach, encouraging enjoyment and love of Dog River by the community, and by developing good working relations with local leaders, policy makers, stormwater and wastewater managers.
DRCR has a science-based approach to their actions and they have made volunteer water monitoring with AWW a core initiative. By strategically selecting sampling sites, and consistently recruiting volunteers, they’ve been able to collect nearly 5,000 water data records from the 95 square mile watershed over the past 25 years. This effort has gained the revere and support of local organizations including Mobile Bay National Estuary Preserve as evidenced in the letter of support submitted by their director, Roberta Swann. Group members have served as a beacon of inspiration to other AWW groups throughout the state. We are thankful for Dog River Clearwater Revival’s “Water Spirit!”
Lifetime Achievement Award – Jeff and Linde Lynn
The Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest honor bestowed upon an individual or group within the volunteer water quality monitoring community. This award is reserved for those who have demonstrated exceptional service, unwavering commitment, and remarkable accomplishments over an extended period in the pursuit of safeguarding and rehabilitating watersheds through the practice of water monitoring.
Jeff and Linde became volunteers with Wolf Bay Watershed Watch in the 1990’s and then were certified as AWW monitors by Mike Shelton in 2004. Since then, they have been steadily volunteering for almost 20 years, and have reported the most data records out of almost everyone within the watershed. They have collected and reported over 1,100 Alabama Water Watch data points. By quantity, they are No. 9 and No. 10 in the list of AWW monitors with the most records ever. Because of monitors like the Lynns, WBWW is the No. 2 group overall in number of records sent to AWW with over 9,000.
Over the past 20 years, they have collected and submitted water data records from waterbodies in the Wolf Bay watershed including Wolf Creek, Miflin Creek, and Stone Bayou. This extensive and valuable set of baseline data has contributed to many positive changes in the watershed. The most notable outcome of your data collection may be Wolf Bay’s designation by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management as one of the few Outstanding Alabama Waterbodies, in 2007. This designation requires evidence that the waterbody is of exceptional recreational or ecological significance. In addition, one must demonstrate that its water is of the highest quality based on levels of dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and bacteria.
Through their years of service with Wolf Bay Watershed Watch, they have also inspired countless others to join the cause. The Lynns were nominated by Jackie McGonigal, who has been involved as an AWW monitor, trainer, and WBWW board member for more than a decade. She shared that when she became an AWW Trainer, the Lynns offered insights to the “quirks of the chemical kits, and what atypical results could look like, and encouraged me to keep going. They emphasized that what we were doing was important and impactful.”
We are thankful for the Lynn’s commitment and perseverance to help protect Wolf Bay and Alabama waters!
Thank you to all of our 2024 Award Winners and congratulations on your hard work!