Wading ankle deep into the Conestoga River, Todd Umstead bent over and placed an electronic device into the water, recording its chemistry before later scrawling the results into a handwritten spreadsheet.
Just feet away, beakers, vials and other scientific equipment sat scattered across a pebble-covered shore where the river passes near Windolph Landing Park in Lancaster Township.
All of those items, he said, are necessary — used to record conditions in the waterway as part of an effort to monitor its overall health.
But Umstead isn’t a scientist. He’s a volunteer, one of about five dozen conservation-minded residents who help track the quality of countywide rivers and creeks for the Lancaster County Conservation District.
“I love to fish. Fishing is my passion. And fish need clean water to live,” Umstead said, explaining why he got involved with the program, which tracks impairment in rivers and their tributaries.
It’s work that’s become increasingly important as county officials and conservation organizations strive to meet federal mandates, which demand the reduction of steam-impairing pollutants — harmful sediment and nutrients, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus — to clean local waterways.
Early this year, state figures showed that 89.4% of 1,432 assessed stream miles in Lancaster County are considered impaired, according to the Department of Environmental Protection’s draft 2022 Pennsylvania Integrated Water Quality Report. There are 1,438 total stream miles in the county.
That high percentage stood out earlier this month to Matthew Kofroth, a Conservation District watershed specialist who oversees the volunteer monitoring program, called the Water Quality Volunteer Coalition.
The goal of the program, Kofroth said, is to keep a running record of those impairments, as well as hoped-for improvements as environmental restoration work takes place throughout the county’s watersheds.
“The idea of this group, as it kind of always has been, is to gather baseline water quality data, kind of citizen science-based data,” Kofroth said.
Todd Umstead, a member of the Conestoga River Club, tests the pH level of water in the Conestoga River, near Windolph Landing Park in Lancaster Township Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022.
50 to 60 volunteers
On the Conestoga’s pebble-covered riverbank, Umstead showed off that process, collecting water samples and using all of that scientific equipment to record water-quality indicators — acidity, temperature, flow rate, clarity, oxygen levels and other factors, including the concentration of certain pollutants like nitrates and phosphates.
The pollutants impair both local waterways, and those downstream, including the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay.
And that sampling work is in addition to volunteers’ biennial collection of pollution-sensitive aquatic insects, like mayflies and caddisflies, whose presence is a positive indicator of good stream health.
Umstead is just one of 50 to 60 volunteers collecting data from about three dozen monitoring sites, Kofroth said.
Ideally, those samplers will return to the same exact spots in their chosen waterways every month, recording a continuum of data that would show changes overtime, Kofroth said. It’s unlikely that drastic improvements or setbacks would be recorded from one month to the next, he said.
“You are not going to see that. It took hundreds of years to degrade, and it’s going to take a long time to improve. We are kind of ‘The Tortoise and the Hare,’” Kofroth said. “It’s ‘slow and steady wins the race.’”
Currently, volunteers are allowed to pick their own sites, as long as the streams they sample are within Lancaster County, Kofroth said, explaining that district officials would like to track watersheds countywide.
But increasingly, he said, DEP officials have urged program leaders to direct samplers to waterways near areas where restoration work — like streambank repairs, legacy sediment removal and riverside tree and shrub planting — has been implemented in an attempt to meet pollution reduction mandates.
Kofroth guessed that request stems from a hope that sampling results might prove that restoration projects have been successful in reducing impairment by capturing pollutants, which are often carried to streams form urban and agricultural land by stormwater.
By itself, data collected by the volunteers isn’t enough to have a river or stream added or removed from the state’s list of impaired streams, but if results show continued changes, when submitted, they could draw attention from state and federal regulators, Kofroth said.
“No, we are not delisting a stream, but in essence we are because we are providing water quality data that’s out there, and then, we … pass that along to those that are legally able to take it off of that list,” he said. “From a citizen science standpoint, that’s what we’re doing.”
Todd Umstead, a member of the Conestoga River Club, tests the pH level of water in the Conestoga River near Windolph Landing Park in Lancaster Township Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022.
Something like a social club
Still, the work is not always so serious, Kofroth said, describing the program also as something like a social club.
That was clear earlier this month during a Water Quality Volunteer Coalition meeting at the Farm and Home Center in Lancaster, where a small group of samplers spoke about their work and shared funny stories about testing trips gone awry.
There, they also heard from Kofroth, who showed off newly purchased sampling kits full of scientific equipment that will add to and replace older kits, many of which haven’t been updated for at least 15 years, he said.
“They have been taking very good care of it, but it does wear,” Kofroth said, applauding volunteers. “It was time to upgrade.”
Those new kits came at a price of about $20,000, Kofroth said, explaining the cost was covered with state funding.
All told, the group now has about 10 kits, which are shared among volunteers, he said.
Speaking for the volunteers, Kofroth said many of them are like-minded, environment-conscious county residents who are attracted to the opportunity to get outside and possibly contribute to the stream improvements.
Among them is Mary Kay Phillips of the Octoraro Watershed Association, which is responsible for testing numerous sites, most surrounding the Octoraro Reservoir, she said.
“A lot of them are just tiny, little feeder streams,” she said, adding that there is ample room for growth. “We are trying to expand the number of sites we are working in.”
Increased interest in the outdoors following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to an uptick in participating volunteers, Kofroth said, noting recent partnerships with recreation and conservation groups like the Conestoga River Club, of which Umstead is a member.
Still, he said, newcomers are welcome.
Those interested in the program, including sampling results, can visit lancasterwatersheds.org/volunteer-water-quality-monitoring/, officials said.
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