How Do YOU See the Winooski?

In exploring the Winooski River, I have come to notice that even the environment is viewed in vastly different ways in Vermont. The Winooski River, which runs from Cabot to Colchester, is a prime example. Below is an image of the Winooski River watershed. As you can see, it encompasses all of Washington County, half of Chittenden County, and portions of Lamoille and Orange Counties. It’s the largest river tributary to Lake Champlain! So, people who live in the watershed, whether they border the river or live 15 miles away, have an impact not only on the river but also ultimately on Lake Champlain. This is one of the major reasons why the effects of pollution on the Winooski and efforts to mitigate them are so important.

One of the main conservation organizations in the northeast of Vermont is Friends of the Winooski (FOW), a nonprofit conservation group that strives to “restore and protect the Winooski River and its tributaries.” It focuses on improving water quality, pollution abatement, riparian buffer restoration, and landowner outreach among a plethora of other aims. Our group is interested in the health of the Winooski, particularly locally, so the interactive water quality monitoring Google Map that the Friends of the Winooski made has been eye opening. They monitor several locations near the headwaters in Cabot and the middle section near Plainfield and Montpelier. Explore the map and see how the health of the Winooski fares near you!

Friends of the Winooski Monitoring Map

I decided to explore the complex role that dams also play in the health and physiology of a river. In Vermont, there are around 200 dams, some of which are quite old and some of which are newer and still provide electricity for the state. Since Friends of the Winooski is especially concerned with the chemical health of the Winooski, you can see on the Google map how they took samples last June-August for the E.coli bacteria. The results are listed as the # bacteria/100 mL of water using the EPA approved IDEXX method, and it is interesting to note that Vermont has the “strictest standards in the nation.” This means that the maximum # bacteria for safe swimming conditions are 77/100 mL of water. Of course, different abiotic and biotic factors make the river more welcoming or inhospitable to these organisms.

Let me draw your attention to several of the monitored sites on this map. Since we are interested in the effects dams have on river health, areas above and below the hydro dam in Marshfield were examined. You can see that actually the results indicate that the river was healthier below the dam.

However, there is also a dam in Plainfield that counters the data from Marshfield. In Plainfield, if you click on the magenta icon that says “Winooski River, 71.4” with a sub-heading of “Below dam, above Great Brook,” you can see that the results were already at enormously dangerous levels in late June and skyrocketed into August, with a spike in late July that was almost 20 times the “safe” limit. The results of another monitoring site “Winooski 71.5” above the dam are a bit healthier, although also with an extremely dangerous spike in number of bacteria in July. Often the summer months harbor more bacteria because they thrive in warmer water temperatures, but usually spikes like these are due to large rainstorms that flood the lake with water that has poured across all sorts of impervious surfaces and forest, bringing along an abundance of bacteria. There was most likely a rainstorm a day or two before the third round of testing was performed, leading to the elevated levels. It usually takes a few days for everything to settle before it is safe to swim again.  In general however, dams slow the flow of water on both sides, lower water temperatures, and increase sediment and nutrients in rivers- all factors that potentially can positively impact bacteria like e.coli.  Thus, it is vital to analyze the validity of having dams along the Winooski still, when in most cases they are not as economically viable as they were in the 1800s.

Citations

Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, (2008). Winooski river basin and major sub-basins.. Retrieved from website: http://www.vtwaterquality.org/planning/docs/pl_basin8.colormap.pdf 

Friends of the Winooski. (2012). Winooski watershed. Retrieved from http://winooskiriver.org/index.php

(2011). Winooski river monitoring. (2011). [Web Map]. Retrieved from http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=210568646831738140547.0004a6c7efe7d141e3d87&msa=0