WaterWatch UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO EXTENSION UPDATE

Summer 2013 Volume 3 Issue 3

University of Idaho, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Idaho counties cooperating.

Highlights

Rose Lake Monitoring

Summer Workshops

Spring Snapshot Results

IDAH2O Database Update

Contact Information

Jim Ekins

Area Water Educator

Marie Pengilly

IDAH2O Volunteer Coordinator

1031 North Academic Way

Suite #242

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83814

(208) 292-1287

idah2o@uidaho.edu

www.uidaho.edu/cda/idah2o

The University of Idaho is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and

educational organization. We offer our programs to persons regardless of race,

color, national origin, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation, or disability.

Hooray! Summer is finally here, though for much of June, it seemed far away. I am the

new Area Water Educator for University of Idaho Northern District’s Extension Service,

running the IDAH2O Master Water Stewards Program (under Marie’s watchful eye, of

course!). I have been at this desk for barely two months, and I have already met many

treasured IDAH2O volunteers. My professional and academic background is in volunteer-

ism and collaborative natural resources management. Previously, I was the Director for

Service-Learning and Internships, where I supported academic service-learning and ex-

periential education programs throughout the university and the region. I also study

social-ecological resiliency as a PhD student in Conservation Social Sciences at UI.

My plans to keep the IDAH2O Master Water Steward Program going strong include up-

coming workshops in Moscow, ID and the development of workshops tailored specifical-

ly for K-12 teachers. I am also always seeking community organizations to present about

water quality in general and IDAH2O in particular. For instance, early this month, Marie

and I presented to the Coeur d’Alene Canoe and Kayak Club, and then co-led a club-

sponsored Water Quality Paddle around Blackwell Island. If your community organiza-

tion would like me to present, please contact me.

I am also seeking other ways to grow and enhance the program. For instance, it might

be useful to develop a second tier of certification, along the lines of the 30-40-hour Mas-

ter Naturalist, Master Forest Stewards, and/or Master Gardener programs. These pro-

grams require the mastery of a broader knowledge- and skill-set, and come with in-

creased volunteer requirements. This could also incorporate more high-tech sampling

and laboratory analysis techniques such. There are many potential directions the pro-

gram could go. I am always open to suggestions and ideas about how the program can

evolve and grow into the next few years.

I am so very much looking forward to working with all of you to help understand Idaho’s

wadeable streams and other water bodies. Have a wonderful summer, and please don’t

be a stranger. Write, call, text-message, or just swing by the Community Water Re-

sources Center here in Coeur d’Alene any time for a chat.

Sincerely, Jim Ekins

Master Water Steward Workshops story by Marie Pengilly

What a great start to the summer! We have already held four

IDAH2O workshops and have certified 35 Master Water Stew-

ards this year. We held our first training at the end of May for

a group of NIC students in the INBRE internship program. In

continuing our expansion of the program in southern Idaho,

we held a workshop in Boise at the WaterShed Environmental

Education Center and in McCall at the McCall Outdoor Science

School. We had a great turnout and beautiful weather for

both. Last weekend we held a workshop in Sandpoint with a

slightly smaller, but very enthusiastic, group of volunteers.

We still have two workshops coming up in July and it’s not too

late to sign up! We will be holding one in Moscow on Satur-

day, July 20 and one in Coeur d’Alene on Saturday, July 27.

An IDAH2O workshop consists of a morning classroom session

and an afternoon hands-on field session. Professional devel-

opment credits are available for K-12 educators. These work-

shops are filling up quick so be sure to register!

Additionally, volunteers who have already gone through an

IDAH2O training are welcome to join us for the field portion of

any workshop to review monitoring methods. These refresher

courses are free, but registration is required so that I can keep

you updated about changes in times, dates, locations, etc.

Please sign up at www.uidaho.edu/cda/idah2o/workshops

under the “Refresher Course” section.

If you are unable to attend one of the scheduled workshops,

but are interested in certification, please let us know! We

would love to keep you updated on upcoming events.

Upcoming Workshops:

Moscow Saturday, July 20

Coeur d’Alene Saturday, July 27

Register on our website:

www.uidaho.edu/cda/idah2o/workshops

You may remember a story in the Fall

2012 WaterWatch about the “Water

Stewards of Tomorrow”. Eight months

later, the collaborative project between

three local high schools came to an

end. Cindy Rust, a science teacher at

Post Falls High, reflects on the year.

Jamie Esler from Lake City High School,

Rusti Kreider from St. Maries High

School, and I embarked on a mission

with the help of funding from the Lands

Council of Spokane and thanks to Kat

Hall. This mission was to get students

involved in a collaborative, hand-on

science study in the field. That meant

putting to use the skills and knowledge

learned in the classroom during a field

trip with all the unexpected compo-

nents that real field scientists like Idaho

Fish and Game’s Phil Cooper and Pete

Rust (who also assisted) deal with in

their occupations.

The focus was seasonal change in wa-

ter quality factors at Rose Lake. Each

school visited the lake during a differ-

ent season and tested factors such as

turbidity, pH, dissolved oxygen, and

macroinvertebrates. Yes, that meant a

field trip for high school kids, a rare

event for academic classes these days,

and that transportation cost was pro-

vided by Lands Council. Water test kits

were provided by the University of Ida-

ho’s Water Resource Center and

IDAH2O Program. Attempts to test wa-

ter in middle lake areas were assisted

by Idaho Fish and Game. Data was en-

tered into the IDAH2O database and

was shared between schools via the

Idaho Education Network after each

trip. Finally, data was compiled into

graphs by Marie Pengilly of IDAH2O to

answer the original project question.

Continued on page 3...

High Schools Team Up to Monitor at Rose Lake story by Cindy Rust

A huge thank you to all of the Master Water Stewards that participated in our spring Snapshot! We had a great turnout and tested water from 24 sites.

We analyzed samples for nitrate-N, total phosphorus, total coliform, and E. coli. The HACH technologies we use to test for nitrates has a detection range of 0.23-13.50 mg/L. With the exception of four sites, all samples tested were below the detectable level. The testing range for total phosphorus is between 0.05-1.5 mg/L. We only had one site that had detectable levels of phosphorus.

Bacteria levels were generally low, though we did have some hot spots. In our lab analysis we looked at both total coliform (all bacteria present in the sys-

tem) and E. coli (a well-known specific bacteria found in all warm-blooded or-ganisms). Total coliforms and E. coli val-ues are both expressed in MPN/100mL or Most Probable Number per 100 mL of sample water. Although bacteria levels at some sites were high, caution needs to be taken when interpreting the re-sults. Bacteria is a pollutant that can be very flashy in a system. Idaho DEQ has established a set of testing criteria to determine whether a waterway is ad-versely affected by bacteria. For more information on these criteria, please contact us.

To ensure accuracy and precision in our Snapshot, we followed the protocol set forth in our Quality Assurance Project

Plan. Field duplicates were collected at 10% of participating sites and were ana-lyzed in the lab along with blanks for each test.

Please contact us if you have any ques-tions about quality assurance measures, water quality standards, or for assis-tance in understanding the results. Thanks again for your participation!

Spring Snapshot Results story by Marie Pengilly

You can find Snapshot results on our website at: http://www.uidaho.edu/cda/idah2o/specialevents

Our students learned so much; the list would take pages to ex-

press, but everyone would agree that it seems from this study

that Rose Lake is a healthy system. Dissolved oxygen seems to

fluctuate at a reasonable level due to water temperature chang-

es and snow melt, and pH seems to be stable with a slight drop

in the spring with snow melt. Macroinvertebrates indicate a

healthy system with some sensitive organisms present. The lake

is clear and has very little pollution. Students from all schools

hope that the public will respect the health of the lake and con-

tinue to support it as we interact with it.

These students also are extremely grateful for the opportunity

to experience this real world field science lesson, not to mention

the lesson in fishing they got from Jim Burkholder, a volunteer

from Idaho Fish and Game who runs the Take Me Fishing trailer.

The St. Maries students also got a special lesson in kayaking

thanks to the generosity of Harrison Idaho Water Adventures.

For students, it just doesn’t get any better than this, does it?

With community assistance, teachers really can provide authen-

tic learning.

Rose Lake, continued from page 2

UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO EXTENSION UPDATE

WaterWatch Call for Unused Kits!

Do you have an IDAH2O monitoring kit collecting

dust? Although we would love to see all of our Mas-

ter Water Stewards regularly submitting data, there

is no pressure to actively monitor for our program.

We understand that it can be hard to make time or

that plans change. If you find that, for whatever rea-

son, you are unable to monitor for us at this time,

please contact us about returning your kit. We do

have limited funds so we like to make sure our kits

are being used as much as possible.

Water Quality Database Update

The new IDAH2O water quality database is now in the fi-

nal development stage. We have migrated it from the pro-

duction website to the Northwest Knowledge Network

site where it will be housed. We are planning to launch

the new database by August. It had been scheduled for

launch earlier, but our information systems experts are

still working out the last of the bugs (for once, it’s safe to

use “bugs” and NOT macroinvertebrates…). We will be

sending out information on how to enter and view data

very soon! Stay tuned!

www.facebook.com/idah2o

IDAH2O workshops in Boise, McCall, and Sandpoint.

For more pictures, visit our Facebook page!