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
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!