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Certified Water Quality Monitors for the
San Bernard River
Darrell Powell, Vanessa Taylor, Jane Wallace,
Larry Vacek, Roy Edwards
F.O.R. Members Join Texas Stream Team –
Test Water Quality on the
San
Bernard
River
Texas Stream Team
has a few Friends Of the River San Bernard added to the team
as of Saturday, August 2, 2008
when they successfully completed Phase III of their Water
Quality Monitoring Certification Program and were given
their official water testing kits.
To receive certification as a Texas
Stream Team Water Quality Monitor, all volunteers must
complete a three phase training program.
F.O.R. Members Larry Vacek, Vanessa
Taylor, Jane Wallace, Darrell Powell, Jan Edwards and Roy
Edwards all successfully completed their Phase III training
and selected their individual testing locations on the San
Bernard River at the F.O.R. Community Center with trainer,
Gayla Stock of the Houston–Galveston Area Council (H-GAC).
The certified volunteers will conduct
water quality testing; checking and noting water
temperature, pH level, dissolved oxygen, total dissolved
solids and conductivity (for total dissolved solids) or
salinity, and water clarity at their individual locations
once a month. They will then fill in a data sheet, which
goes through a quality assurance check and then into
a statewide database with records from all Texas Stream Team
monitoring sites.
The mission of the
Texas Stream Team is to facilitate environmental stewardship
by empowering a statewide network of concerned volunteers,
partners and institutions in a collaborative effort to
promote a healthy and safe environment through education,
data collection, and community action.
The Texas Stream
Team is a cooperative partnership of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
(TCEQ), and the
Texas
State
University.
It is an educational and monitoring program funded through a
US E.P.A. Nonpoint source pollution grant. It involves the
participation of volunteers, students, faculty, the TCEQ and
Texas Stream Team Partners such as river authorities,
regional councils, businesses, universities and other
groups. F.O.R.’s involvement is through the Texas Stream
Team partner, Houston-Galveston Area Council.
F.O.R. Members participated in 2
separate Phase I and II classes held in April and in June.
F.O.R. Members, Fred Kanter and Andrew Kanter, completed
Phases I and II of the certification program at the April
session. H-GAC’s trainer and Texas Stream Team Coordinator,
Gayla Stock, along with F.O.R. Member, Al Roco (who is in
training to become a Water Monitoring Trainer) conducted the
initial training. F.O.R. Members Jackie and Bill Benson are
beginning the training process.
F.O.R. Members who completed
certification will now begin testing water quality at their
sites monthly which will add data about the San Bernard
watershed to the state data base. It is a significant step
to developing a watershed protection plan for the river
which is important as urban sprawl and its associated
problems begin to impact our little river.
The first Cadre of F.O.R. Water
Quality Monitors have officially gone through training and
will begin actively monitoring the river this fall. But if
you missed out on the initial water quality monitoring
certification, and would like to join in the water quality
testing, you still have a chance to do so. There will be
another training class in the Spring of 2009. The training
time and place will be announced after January 1st.
Water quality testing – and those who
care enough to protect the river’s integrity reminds one of
something wise Aristotle said many years ago,
“Boundaries don’t protect rivers, people do”.
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