Watch over the future

How did you spend your Saturday morning?
Chances are, you didn’t spend any part of your weekend holding a clipboard and jotting down things like water temperatures or phosphate levels or degrees of turbidity.
That’s my job.
My wife is a Riverwatch volunteer for the Upper Wabash River Commission.
What’s that mean?
It means that every few months we spend a Saturday morning in northern Jay County, checking on Limberlost Creek and the Loblolly Ditch.
It works pretty much like this:
We drive out to a spot northeast of Bryant. There, Connie drops a bucket into Limberlost Creek.
She’ll then go through a series of tests.
My job is to write down the data she collects.
The purpose is to keep an eye on the streams and ditches and creeks that flow into the Wabash. Trouble upstream translates into trouble downstream.
My wife is now in her third or fourth year of doing this, and I’ve been her able and trusted assistant for most of that time.
So, what has been learned?
The short version is that things are in pretty good shape.
The water taken from a sampling site on the Loblolly, east of the Loblolly Wetlands Preserve, is remarkably clear. Fresh water mussels are thriving in the creek.
Phosphates, which used to be a common problem in Indiana streams because of their presence in laundry detergents, are essentially a non-issue. There’s not much evidence at all.
Nitrates and nitrites show up, but the levels are dependent upon things like recent rainfall and recent fertilizer applications.
Limberlost Creek is looking pretty healthy. I still remember fishing there when I was a kid, and you could do it today.
So how do nearby farmers feel about the tests that are being done?
They seem to be supportive once they understand what’s going on.
Some of the Riverwatch volunteers are farmers themselves.
And farmers with adjacent land often take a personal interest in keeping the streams and ditches in good shape.
That can be a never-ending chore.
Last Saturday, for example, we spotted a new batch of plastic crap dumped into Limberlost Creek by someone too lazy to take it to the landfill or recycle it.
Another site, which had seen trash cleaned up by a dedicated farmer with adjacent land, still has a tire on the west side of the bridge and an axle — an axle! — on the creek bottom on the east side.
It can be disheartening to say the least.
Why does my wife do this work? Why do she and other volunteers give up a chunk of their weekend to watch over ditches and creeks that would otherwise be forgotten?
Because they care.
Why do I tag along with the clipboard?
Because I love her.[[In-content Ad]]