The Official Blog of Alabama Water Watch
AWW Director, Eric Reutebuch, had the pleasure and the privilege of presenting the 2016 ‘Smith State of the Lake Address’ to a packed house at the Smith Lake Civic Association Building near Jasper, AL last week. Eric was thrilled to see such a large, enthusiastic crowd gathered to learn about watershed stewardship!
Continue reading “Smith Lake folks enthusiastic about lake stewardship!”
Water Watchers,
We have some exciting news – the AWW data graphs are back! Thanks to the exceptional dedication of our database gurus, Jim Johnson and Sergio (below), and their hundreds of hours of grinding through many new technological database and web-hosting challenges (SQL, Visual Studio, Cloud-based hosting – not sure what these terms mean – THANK GOD FOR JIM AND SERG!!)
For the last couple of years, Alabama Water Watch (AWW) has been working in partnership with Alabama 4-H to expand opportunities for youth to get involved with volunteer water monitoring. Youth can play an important role in watershed stewardship, and youth need opportunities for fun, hands-on experiences with science. The 4-H AWW partnership program contributes greatly to both of these needs.
Over the last few months, 4-H AWW activity has been blossoming in west Alabama. Anyone who was traveling on Hwy 56 near the small Washington County community of Hobson on July 22nd were undoubtedly curious as to what a group of kids hanging out under the bridge were doing. Besides catching a bass or two in Bassetts Creek, which runs under the bridge, these 4-H members were conducting their first official AWW sampling event!
We are sad to report the loss of one of our AWW family of volunteer monitors, Mr. Gary Collins from Talladega, Alabama. Gary passed away the morning of Friday, October 9th, 2015 on his way to work on his motorcycle when someone pulled out in front of him.
Alabama Water Watch and Wolf Bay Watershed Watch (WBWW) were showcased in the Ecological Society of America’s publication Issues in Ecology – Investing in Citizen Science Can Improve Natural Resource Management and Environmental Protection.
Continue reading “AWW and Wolf Bay Watershed Watch Showcased Nationally”
Two Alabama Water Watch volunteer monitors, Beth Prior (Auburn High School student) and Sydney Smith (AU student), have compiled various forms of data about Parkerson Mill Creek on Auburn University’s campus, with the goal of highlighting negative impacts on the stream and encouraging landscape managers to address them.
Continue reading “Auburn student monitors watch over Parkerson Mill Creek”
by Stephen G. Tsikalas, Ph.D. and Jade Patolo, M.S.
https://www.facebook.com/JacksonvilleRiverMonitors
Established in February of 2014 by Jade Patolo with the assistance of Ms. Francine Hutchinson and Dr. Stephen Tsikalas, the Jacksonville River Monitors (JRM) are a group of citizen and student scientists concerned about water quality and land-use management in the Coosa River Basin. Our monitors receive training through Alabama Water Watch (AWW) in water chemistry (pH, temp, turbidity, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen, hardness) and bacteriology [Escherichia coli (E. coli) and other coliforms] methods for fresh water.
Continue reading “Jacksonville River Monitors make a big splash in Alabama”
On June 13th, the AWW Annual Meeting took place in Auburn, AL. You can read the highlights from this great get-together in the previous blog article: Who’s watching our water
One of our favorite things to do during the AWW Annual Meeting is to recognize several of the dedicated volunteers who have gone above and beyond the call of duty for the year.
Through the years, there are several awards that have become AWW standards. The Mullen Award is one of those quintessential awards. This award is intended to recognize the individual who has submitted more water data records than any other monitor during the last 12 months. It is called the Mullen Award because Mike and Alice Mullen turn in such a large amount of records each year that no one else can ever beat them. We thought that naming the award after them was only appropriate! This year Mike submitted 318 records and Alice submitted 107! That’s a lot of hours streamside!!
I first met LaVerne at an annual meeting of the Smith Lake water watchers several years ago. He immediately struck me as a straightforward gentleman who was concerned about preserving and protecting the environment and was committed to doing something about it. He introduced himself and then asked me ‘can we get AWW to come up to Winston County and conduct some of your water testing classes for us?” I replied that we would be thrilled to train folks in Winston County in water quality monitoring since we had no volunteer water monitors there. And thus it began. Continue reading “We miss you, LaVerne!”
One of the most common misconceptions that we, the AWW staff, frequently encounter in our travels throughout the state is “the state is looking after my creek/river/lake/bay/bayou, right?” Unfortunately, in the majority of cases, the answer is “sort of”. With more than 77,000 miles of streams/rivers and over half a million acres of pond/lakes/reservoirs in the state, even a well-funded state agency would be hard-pressed to monitor Alabama’s waters, let alone a state agency that’s been cut to the bone, as the Alabama Department of Environmental Management has been.
Enter Alabama Water Watch. As the AWW monitors, trainers and friends from eight of the state’s ten major basins learned at AWW’s Annual Gathering on Saturday, June 13th, the collective efforts of hundreds of citizen volunteer monitors are taking up the slack.
