Local School Engages in Stream Sampling Ahead of Restoration Work

By: Lydia Brinkley

On a beautiful sunny spring day, Morris Central School 9^th and 12^th grade science classes joined the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) and the Upper Susquehanna Coalition (USC) along the Butternut Creek.  We gathered on this day to sample water and aquatic insects, to take flow measurements, and expose the MCS students to the stream corridor restoration project we’re about to undertake on the school’s property. At this particular spot, there is a severely eroding bank, with adjacent floodplain wetland and riparian areas also in need of restoration.

The school was eager to get involved.  Heather Grant, Middle/High School Science Faculty, has trained up in the Bay’s Watershed Education and Training (B-WET) program, a project that Otsego County Conservation Association has brought it the area. Our sampling day fit perfectly within the Chesapeake Bay Headwaters Education Ecosystem, a statewide K-12 Environmental Literacy Initiative. Heather easily coordinated the involvement of other teachers and classes, so that over 30 students were present for the sampling. The students were very engaged and aside from jumping right in to check out the macroinvertebrates we found, they were excited to pick up trash from the area! We’re hoping to engage with the school on events like this, at this property for years to come.  Maybe they’ll even agree to steward the hundreds of trees that are going to be planted there this fall.

The streambank erosion issue was originally noticed during the Butternut Watershed Assessment that took place in 2016, and is an area that the local watershed group, Butternut Valley Alliance (BVA), has been serious about addressing. For years, the local farmer had been cropping and haying up to the streams edge, but now has a hard time accessing portions of the field because of the bank erosion. The USC has been working on restoring the stream corridor since late summer of 2022 and now has all necessary permits in hand to move forward. Knowing that SRBC samples downstream, we invited them to come up to this site to take some baseline information and engage with the local community.

“Susquehanna River Basin Commission maintains 11 continuous monitoring stations in the New York portion of the Susquehanna River Basin, including one in Butternut Creek.  The continuously collected data is supplemented by routine lab chemistry analysis as well as macroinvertebrate and fish collections”, says Luanne Steffy, SRBC’s Aquatic Ecologist. While we are still waiting to get the data back on the macroinvertebrate sampling, the water chemistry analysis has revealed that the creek is in fair condition as compared to other streams of similar drainage area in the same ecoregion.

SRBC’s Continuous Instream Monitoring Station Dashboard

Look for project updates here and in our USC Newsletter!