If it hadn’t wiggled, I wouldn’t have seen it. But it did wiggle, so I used my pink handled tweezers and delicately lifted the tiny, soft body of the Caddis fly nymph into a cell of an ice cube tray filled with stream water to be poured back into the Run in a few minutes. It will become a data point that is part of a crucial survey to monitor the health of our stream.
WSWA conducts these annual surveys at four sites along Warm Springs Run: near Widmyer Elementary School, adjacent to the Country Inn parking lot, Jimstown Rd. at the intersection of Rt. 522, and near the intersection of Fairview Dr. and River Rd.
In addition to counting critters carefully lifted from the rills and runs in the stream, we collect other data about the quality of the water such as the turbidity, Ph level, water temperature, oxygen level and alkalinity. Observational data are also collected about the setting such as algae color and density, nearby construction, land use along the banks, recent rainfall and other weather conditions. Data collectors are trained through the WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
Collecting annual data allows us to detect changes that might indicate a danger to the quality of the stream. This is important to those tiny swimmers, and it is also important to us big folks. Warm Springs Run travels through 12.5 miles of Morgan County, which includes running through (and under) the town of Bath. From there it empties directly into the Potomac River as part of the larger Chesapeake Watershed.
All of this data is submitted as a formal report to a state wide group called Save Our Streams which in turn submits the reports to the WV DEP Finally, it goes to the US Geological Survey where it is combined with the reports of 1,885 other organizations and becomes part of a national picture of the health of our waterways. Local and regional data are often used to inform municipalities concerning construction projects, flood management, waste treatment, irrigation management, and drinking water supplies.
John Powell proposed the first waterway monitoring initiative in the 1880s which became the USGS Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program. The “Program supports the collection and (or) delivery of both streamflow and water-level information at 8,705 sites (continuous record) and water-level information alone or partial record streamflow at 3,460 additional sites. The data are served online—most in near real-time—to meet many diverse needs; more than 2.5 billion requests for water information were fulfilled during the 2024 water year (Oct. 1, 2023‒Sept. 30, 2024).” (www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/usgs-national-streamgaging-network)
As I pour the water gently back into the Run, I appreciate the importance of the life story of this tiny resident of Warm Springs Run. Today, it is a miniscule part of a very big picture that WSWA helps create for our national waterway system. In the next issue we’ll dive into an episode of one of our monitoring adventures to better understand just how it plays a part right here in Morgan County.