 SRK currently participates in water quality monitoring activities in the river and many streams throughout the Savannah River basin. These include the river at Augusta and at Savannah (7 zones) and several streams in the Augusta area (Brier Creek, Betty’s Branch, Crawford Creek, Euchee Creek, Reed Creek, Raes Creek, Rocky Creek, Butler Creek, Jones Creek).
For information on monitoring activities contact our county coordinators:
- Chatham County: Dr. Charles Belin, 912-352-0578, chasbel@comcast.net
- Columbia County: Laura Beltran, 706-210-4027
- All other counties: Dr. Frank Carl, 706-364-5253, frankcarl@knology.net
Water quality is monitored using Georgia’s Adopt-a-Stream protocols and the data are maintained by SRK and they are sent to the state for posting in the state’s database. If abnormal readings are recorded attempts are made to discover the causes of those readings. For example, an abnormally high pH in Raes Creek was traced to concrete pouring activity in the creek bed upstream and abnormally high nitrate levels in the river were traced to an industrial nitric acid spill two weeks before the sampling.
There is always a need for volunteers to participate in these monitoring activities and what could be more fun that going out to your neighborhood stream and playing in the water for a couple of hours? All of the teams have a trained leader, but participation on the monitoring activities requires no formal training.
On the other hand, SRK is always looking for leaders to build teams to monitor additional streams within the basin. Leading a team does require some training, but we will train you to be a team leader if you are willing to volunteer about ten hours to become certified in chemical and biological monitoring (see the Training section). |
