Program aims to keep local lakes, rivers, creeks clear of invasive species

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

Volunteers from across the state are being sought to join the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s (MPCA) volunteer water monitoring program. The program monitors water clarity/transparency in Minnesota lakes and streams.

“Our goal is to collect high quality and usable date for the MPCA and have volunteers collect that high quality, consistent data,” said Volunteer Water Monitor Program Specialist Waverly Reibel. “The data is used in water quality assessments and reports at the MPCA.

“Another secondary goal of the program is to get people outside and connected with nature and with water bodies,” Reibel continued. “Once people join this program, they sort-of become longterm local water advocates.”

Anyone is eligible to volunteer for the program as no experience is necessary to complete the simple testing tasks involved. Enrolling in the program is as easy as clicking “sign up” on the volunteer water monitoring page of the MPCA’s website and choosing a lake or stream to monitor.

“Our program has retirees, school groups, church groups, a lot of high schools that do it for extra credit,” said Reibel. “We have college students, we have so many different people who join this program. Most people say it gives them an excuse to get outside, it also gives you an excuse to get back in touch with science because you are collecting useful scientific data.

“You can either be a lake or stream volunteer monitor,” continued Reibel. “Being a lake monitor does require a boat or canoe as we often have you monitor from the deepest part of the lake. Stream monitors can monitors from the shore or from a bridge to collect water.”

Online training is available for all volunteers, which takes the water monitors through an interactive training module that includes videos, pictures, quiz questions all in about 15 minutes. After the training is complete, volunteers are able to test their first water source.

“Volunteers take clarity readings using a secchi disk or a secchi tube,” said Reibel. “Readings can take less than 10 minutes, so it’s super quick and super easy. We provide all the equipment for free, we provide data sheets that you fill out and send back to us.

“It’s during the summer months,” she continued. “You test at least twice per month and it will be at the same site time after time. A lot of times volunteers stay for years and years and keep testing the same site, so we can make trends with that data, see if water clarity is increasing or decreasing.”

Reibel said that water clarity is an invaluable tool to the MPCA as it provides strong evidence for the water source’s health and its future trends. She said that it is very important to have volunteers provide this data and that many monitors even take on multiple sites to monitor due to both speed and ease of the program.

“Water clarity or transparency is a super easy and super quick test, but it kind of acts like the blood pressure of a water body,” said Reibel. “It’s a really important indicator of lake and stream health and it shows how much light is going into the water. For streams, a low clarity reading can mean there’s a lot of excess sediment and runoff in the water. For lakes, if it’s a low clarity reading, a lot of times it’s excess algae. Both excess sediment and algae can affect plants, insects, fish, wildlife communities and even recreation such as fishing and swimming.”

With the water clarity data, the MPCA can monitor whether a lake or stream is increasing or decreasing in transparency over time and provides information for Minnesota state quality standards. Volunteers also take observational notes, including water color and recreational usability.

“Even though it is such a quick and easy test, it really is a holistic view of what could be going on in that water body,” said Reibel. “It’s an awesome program.”

Water monitors are needed on most significant lakes and streams in the area as well as many of the smaller ones. Local lakes include Rush, Leaf Lakes, Big Pine, Portage, Henry, and Buchanan. Local streams include sites along Willow Creek, Otter Tail River, Leaf River and Bluff Creek. These are a few among many other sites around Otter Tail County that are available for monitoring.

A summer resident of this area, Cheryl Piotraschke, volunteers her time on Rush Lake and the Otter Tail River doing her share of water monitoring. She is a Minnesota Master Naturalist, of which the program requires their naturalists to volunteer at least 40 hours a year.

“As a naturalist, we find things that we’re interested in our local areas and water monitoring was one of the things I wanted to do,” said Piotraschke. “I live on Rush Lake and the Otter Tail River feeds into Rush Lake, so I do both river and lake monitoring as part of my volunteer hours.”

Piotraschke lives and teaches in Maple Grove, Minn. during the school year, but when school’s out, so are her secchi disks and data charts. The volunteer opportunity gives her a chance to be closer to nature and enjoy the finer details that we often miss in the hustle and bustle of daily life.

“My favorite part is that it helps me be more in-tune with my surroundings,” said Piotraschke. “I enjoy the serenity of being on the water, near the water, and being extra observant—more observant than I might be on a daily basis—so I get to see and hear things that maybe I wouldn’t see and hear if I wasn’t doing the monitoring. It just helps slow you down and enjoy the moment.”

This year will be Piotraschke’s fourth year monitoring Rush Lake and her third year monitoring Otter Tail River. Having monitoring sites so close to her summer home, she can easily make time for the quick clarity tests between visits from her children and grandchildren who make the trip from the Twin Cities to visit, who love to take in the natural beauty of Otter Tail County.

“Everybody wants to come to the lake in the summer,” she laughed. “Water monitoring is a really easy way to get involved with natural resources. It’s been one of the easiest and most rewarding volunteer activities that I’ve done so far. The communication from the MPCA is excellent, they need volunteers to submit data because they can’t possibly be at every body of water in Minnesota monitoring, so they rely on volunteers for that information to keep our water ways in great shape for our wildlife and for recreation.”