September 14, 2000

IOWATER program promotes
water quality awareness in Iowa

Jessica Tarbox
digital iowa staff reporter
Drake University

DES MOINES, Iowa -- The equipment in an IOWATER kit somewhat resembles the science kits our parents bought for us and sold a year later at a garage sale: a magnifying glass, a bug net, a bug guide and a thermometer.

It also includes gear that would have never appeared in our science kits: test strips to measure the nitrate and phosphate content in water, a secchi dish to measure the amount of sediment in water, and a CHEMetrics Dissolved Oxygen Kit to test oxygen levels in the water. And the information gathered, no matter what we would have liked to believe as children, is much more legitimate than any conclusions made about fireflies in a glass jar.

IOWATER, however, is not simply a more advanced inspection of captured bugs. It is a statewide, citizen-based water quality monitoring program that seeks to involve the community in gathering information about Iowa's bodies of water. The program welcomes all citizens, from fifth-grade students to professional biologists, to get their hands dirty out in the field and engage in a common concern for the state's precious resources.

The IOWATER program was created in 1998 in response to individuals' desires for a cohesive statewide program to organize citizen monitoring. Individual water monitoring has existed in Iowa for many years, with projects such as the Izaak Walton League's Save Our Streams and Area Education Agencies' Iowa Rivers Project. But not until a coalition of several different organizations, including the Department of Natural Resources, the Iowa Environmental Council and the Iowa Farm Bureau, gathered together in May 1998 did a statewide program exist to allow all Iowans to act upon concern for their water resources.

Rich Leopold, IOWATER coordinator, said the demand for a water quality monitoring program has been overwhelming. "Even with zero marketing, we still have demand," he said. "Next year, we will start marketing for high school teachers, AEAs and urban watch groups."

The program was created to satisfy this tremendous citizen demand, and its mission includes the pledge that "IOWATER is a citizen-based program, directed by volunteers' needs within local communities." Leopold said that IOWATER attracts many different people -- "DNR people, high school teachers, farmers, landowners, environmental groups... a lot of them professionals" -- and when they attend the workshops or approach him with inquiries, the first thing he requires them to address is why they are monitoring. Leopold gets a range of responses: A child may be playing in a questionable stream, or a pipe near a neighborhood water source may be a potential problem. The workshops teach citizens how to discover the question they are trying to answer and help to tailor programs to specific communities and time commitments.

"If they want to do biological sampling, they would sample no more than three times a year. Chemical or physical testing, they would test once a month. Stream habitat, only once a year because it changes slowly over time," Leopold said.

Workshop leaders instruct potential monitors, over one- or two-day sessions, how to distinguish between different types of monitoring and how to record their findings. For example, biological sampling includes capturing the bugs that inhabit streams. By comparing the bugs caught to the bugs on the provided Benthic Macroinvertebrate Key, monitors can determine if the stream has low, medium or high amounts of pollution. Some bugs are more tolerant of pollution than others; if a pollution intolerant insect such as a mayfly is found in a stream, the water is most likely not very polluted.

Monitors insert collected data directly into the IOWATER database, accessible at http://www.iowater.net/database/online.asp. "We're the first state in the nation to be all online," Leopold said. "Iowa was the 34th state to get into this [statewide water monitoring], and it's working in our favor. We heard horror stories of warehouses full of paper... we decided early on all electronic information."

This summer's workshops trained 524 monitors. The number of citizens actually involved, however, is much larger than the summer figure; when trained monitors collect data, they often venture into the field with family, friends or colleagues, thus gathering more widespread interest. Leopold estimated that this "multiplying effect" includes about 3,500 Iowans in the program.

The next big push for IOWATER participants will be toward teachers, to help them integrate water monitoring into the year's curriculum. Connie Betts and Wes Wiese are naturalists at the Calkins Nature Center in Hardin County, and their primary ambition for IOWATER is to increase involvement in the education systems. "After one teacher's had curriculum for years, it's hard to get it integrated," Wiese said. "We're fortunate in Hardin that teachers are somewhat open to new things."

Much of the water quality education Betts and Wiese provide is conducted at the nature center and at field trips across the state. They offer whole-day sessions on water resources; the students are separated into stations to study different aspects of water, including stream study, water quality and activities with water. Project Wet is one of these education sessions, where "we look at properties of water, how it clings, how it goes through soil," Betts said.

Wiese said, "It's really good for small kids. It's something they can understand and get their hands on... Then they talk to their parents, and it spirals up from there." If parents' interest is sparked, or if other community members would like to be involved, they can contact local naturalists such as Betts and Wiese. Interested citizens can also contact Leopold in Des Moines, at (515) 281-3252 or richard.leopold@dnr.state.ia.us.

And when students, and their parents, begin to bring home IOWATER kits, perhaps the kits will not meet the same garage sale fate of old science kits. The magnifying glasses, bug nets and test strips IOWATER provides offer more than an opportunity to play in muddy streams and collect bugs; IOWATER creates community interest in preserving and valuing Iowa's water resources. Although there's nothing wrong with having a good excuse to play in the mud.