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www.pca.state.mn.us. Follow the links for "water" and "volunteer surface water moni- toring." The CRWP also works with other environmental groups. As a result of a work- shop with the Rivers Council of Minnesota and the Minnesota Lakes Association, it now has a written stream monitoring program. That's important, pointed out Watkins, because it answers on paper the kinds of questions that are asked: what are the goals of the program, why are we doing it and how do we do it? ~ l ~_ nom., ~ - ,~- 'F > ~ 4 a ~',~' i ~ ~ ry~ Sk ~ ~ {i f t '1 1 L~ 3J ~ ~ L ~ r~ f a , ,i 1~ H' ± {Sf. ~ ~ z;~~ f ~_ C . w ~Y. ~ i > n ~7 ,~~;~ , ,; ~ ; o ,~;~a ,~ R ~a. U Q N __.. Jr~. ~ ... I l 3' C W' ~ I O E 3 t +.,, ~?~ '~ r. +g ~ , Most measurements are made from a bridge, explained Richard Fetterly, who not only monitors two locations himself but whose adult children handle three additional sites. Using a bucket, a 60 cm long clear plastic tube is filled with eater from the river. As this water is gradually let out of the tube a black and white design-called a Secchi disk- can be seen through the column of water at the bottom. The length of the column of warer that allows the design to be seen is a measure of clarity of the water. And the clar- ity of the water has been shown to be an excellent indicator of a number of other measures of river health such as suspended solids and turbidity, and leads to information about sediments, nutrients and even in some cases pathogens, said Watkins. In fact, the correlation to turbidity is so good with this simple measure that start- ing in 2006 the citizen generated data will become official data, and that means that official actions can be based on the measure- ments collected by the volunteers. It makes volunteer data collection even more valuable than he expected, said Fetterly, who has seen clarity as low as 1 cm over his six years of monitoring. Volunteers also take river tem- perature and water height measurements. The height can be measured by a tape from the river bottom up to the surface, or from the bridge down to the surface. The final observations are qualitative: what color is the water, does it appear suitable for recreation, can a picture be taken to document condi- tions at time of sampling? In addition to the weekly measure- ments, monitors are asked to respond to "rainfall events;" rainfall over 1 inch. How the system responds to the increased load of sediment carried by runoff is an indicator of how well the system is working, pointed out Norman. She witnessed a surprising result on Belle Creek last year during dry weather. The first rain appeared to have no effect. The second brought a gush of sediment. What she had seen was the effect when the ground finally became saturated. Volunteers like Norman and Fetterly are part of what the Rivers Council calls River Sentinels, about 4,000 nonprofes- sional citizens who are nevertheless excellent at watching their area's waters to protect them and find out where there are-and where there are not-problems, explained council board member Richard Lacher. It extends the capability of professional groups like the PCA many times and makes their efforts much more effective by allowing them to concentrate on areas with real problems. And ultimately, that makes a differ- ence to people like Fetterly, an avid trout fish- erman. When he sees warnings about eating fish, "that doesn't give you a really good feel- ing," he said. "It's important to help preserve habitats for plants and animals," he believes, "over and above the human benefit." Sally Sedgwick is a freelance editor and writer who lives in the lake country of northern Minnesota. She can be reached at sedgwickC~paulbunyan. net. Page 11