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He’s a Pisces, she explained during a sunny evening visit to South Royalton’s Paine’s Beach.
“He really likes the water,” she said, as Oliver scrambled over rocks, splashed in the shallows and practiced skipping stones.
Oliver isn’t the only one in the family who appreciates having the river nearby. An annual gathering of Mojzesz’s friends will bring 60 people to town next month and she said she expects most of them will spend time tubing. To prepare, she has stocked up on extra tubes.
Hot summer days are busy times along the White River. Children play along the banks, sunbathers lounge on riverside rocks and swimmers float along the current.
Some of the people who play in the river also take a more serious view, spending part of their summers collecting information about the river’s health.
The White River Partnership began testing the water near swimming holes 16 years ago because community members asked for information about the river’s safety for users, said Mary Russ, executive director of the White River Partnership.
“People loved to use the river, but was it clean?” Russ said. “Nobody knew.”
It turns out, the river’s main stem is generally clean — enough so that Russ’ 3-year-old is learning to swim in it — but regular monitoring identifies issues that may need to be addressed to keep it that way, she said.
The partnership’s volunteer monitors include Sharon residents Misti and Shay Berry, who live along the river and enjoy swimming, tubing and fishing in its waters.
Every other Wednesday throughout the summer, the Berrys park their cars along the southbound lane of Route 14 in West Hartford and walk through the tall grass on the riverbank to the ledges beneath the West Hartford Bridge.
“It’s amazing how clear it is,” Shay Berry said of the water as he gazed into its shallow depths during the couple’s June 29 visit.
The water under the bridge appeared clean even though it had rained heavily the night before.
In general, staff of the White River Partnership warn that the water is dirtier and more likely to carry potentially harmful bacteria such as E. coli for up to four days following a rain. Generally, clearer water carries lower levels of bacteria.
After arriving at the rocks beneath the bridge, Berry measured turbidity — the distance light can travel down the water column — using a long plastic tube. He was able to see 120 centimeters through the water to the bottom of the tube.
He read the results to his wife who recorded them using a pen and paper attached to a clipboard.
A low turbidity reading — below 10 centimeters for example — means there are suspended solids floating in the water, indicating erosion may be taking place nearby.
Later during the day on June 29, the water at the West Hartford Bridge looked like chocolate milk, as sediment washed into the water from heavy rain the night before made its way downstream, said Rudi Ruddell, the partnership’s monitoring and education coordinator.
Turbidity is not necessarily a threat to the health of humans or aquatic life, but sediment running into a stream or river can coat the bottom and smother aquatic habitat, harming insects and fish over time, said Neil Kamman, manager of the monitoring assessment and planning program at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.
After putting down the turbidity tube, Berry next scooped some water into a yogurt container to measure its conductivity, or ability to carry a charge. Using what looked like a large thermometer with a forked end, he measured the conductivity level at 230 microsiemens.
A high conductivity reading — above the average of between 160 and 180 microsiemens for the West Hartford Bridge site — indicates the presence of dissolved salts from sources such as road run-off and pesticides, said Russ.
Consistently high levels of conductivity combined with high levels of bacteria in the water could indicate the presence of a septic leak, Kamman said.
The single measurement of slightly elevated conductivity levels found at the West Hartford Bridge on June 29 were likely related to the rainstorm the night before, said Ruddell. He noted that the conductivity appeared to rise several hours before the water appeared cloudy.
The Berrys’ last task is to fill a small glass vial with river water.
On her way to work at Ibex in White River Junction, Misti Berry drops the small glass jar containing their sample into a cooler on another volunteer’s porch.
From there, yet another volunteer picks up the cooler and delivers it to the partnership’s office in Royalton.
In some ways, it would be easier for partnership staff to do the data collection themselves rather than training volunteers, said Russ. But monitoring offers volunteers a chance to learn more about the river.
Shay Berry, who is a former board member of the White River Partnership, said monitoring the river has affected how and when he, his wife and their dogs use it.
They are particularly cautious about letting the dogs — Thomas Jefferson, a 12-year-old black Lab, and Daisy, a 9-year-old Lab and collie mix — near the water after a rain, because when the dogs approach the water “the first thing they do is drink, drink, drink,” Berry said.
The biweekly monitoring also offers an opportunity for the Berrys to spend time together before they start their day.
Once they have the samples from 22 sites along the river in hand — at about 11 a.m. — partnership staff analyze them. To do so, staff incubate the samples at 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) for 24 hours.
The next day, staff count the number of bubbles that fluoresce under black light to determine how many colonies of bacteria are in each sample.
A sample that exceeds 235 colonies per 100 milliliters is above the EPA’s limit for water that is considered safe for recreation.
People at play in water with levels of bacteria above this limit are at an increased risk of contracting a gastrointestinal disease, said Kamman.
The partnership publishes the data on its website, whiteriverpartnership.org, the day after volunteers collect samples.
The Berrys, their fellow monitors and the partnership staff repeat this exercise, from June 1 through Sept. 21.
“It’s a beautiful, beautiful river,” said Shay Berry before hopping into his car and continuing with his day.
Also during the summer, Scott Osgood, of Henniker, N.H., monitors four sites on the Mascoma River in Lebanon every other week. Osgood participates in New Hampshire’s volunteer river assessment program.
Osgood, who is Enfield’s town planner, measures dissolved oxygen, water temperature, turbidity and pH. He sends the information he gathers to the state’s Department of Environmental Services.
Unlike the White River Partnership’s volunteers, Osgood does not collect water samples to test for bacteria levels unless he sees something out of the ordinary.
“Our stuff is pretty clean,” he said.
Along the White River, data from the past 16 years has created a baseline for what the staff and volunteers expect to see at each site, Russ said.
By comparing the new information gathered by volunteers to historic data, partnership staff — three employees and an AmeriCorps volunteer — can identify potential areas of concern.
Once they identify possible problems, partnership staff collaborate with state officials to try to find the source of unusual readings and to determine whether and what remedies might be necessary.
For example, consistently high levels of E. coli in the river’s Middle Branch — which begins in Brookfield and travels through Randolph and Bethel before entering the main branch of the White River in Royalton — has spurred the White River Partnership to work with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation’s monitoring, assessment, and planning program to conduct water testing for specific nutrients.
The collaboration allows the White River Partnership to send samples to the Vermont Agricultural and Environmental Laboratory at the University of Vermont in Burlington for further testing.
So far, their efforts have not yet led them to a primary source of the bacteria, Russ said.
“It’s coming from everywhere,” she said.
The next step will be to go to the top of the watershed — Ainsworth State Park in Brookfield — to see whether there is some natural cause such as wildlife feces, she said. There are some large beaver complexes that might contribute to the higher levels of bacteria in the water, she said.
On July 13, when results from most of the watershed yielded E. coli measurements below the EPA’s standard of 235 colonies per 100 milliliters, those from two of the Middle Branch sites measured above it. Dugout Road in Randolph had 435.2 colonies of bacteria per 100 milliliter sample and the mouth of the Middle Branch in Royalton had 547.5 colonies per 100 milliliters.
In the future, Russ said she hopes to use monitoring results to identify areas of potential concern and then work to find specific sources. Remedies for human contributions to the river’s bacteria loads might include fencing animals out of waterways, restoring buffers between farm fields and the river, shoring up dirt roads and repairing septic systems.
The Berrys’ June 29 water sample from the West Hartford Bridge showed 290.9 colonies per 100 milliliters, above the EPA’s standard. The previous two samples at the West Hartford Bridge, taken on June 1 and 15, showed E. coli levels well below the EPA threshold: 33.6 and 46.5 colonies per 100 milliliters, respectively. In each of the two tests prior to June 29, just two of the partnership’s 22 sites had water with E. coli levels of concern.
All but three of the sites the partnership monitors measured above the standard on June 29 — evidence to support the partnership’s general rule of thumb urging those using the river to be cautious following heavy rain.
The Watson Park site in Hartford measured below the standard on June 29. It’s likely that higher levels of bacteria simply hadn’t yet made it that far downstream, Russ said.
This time of year, the most popular use of the river is tubing, said Noah Pollock, a project manager for the Montpelier-based Vermont River Conservancy. Tubing is inexpensive and there are parts of the river that are sometimes too low to float a canoe or kayak, he said.
A stretch of the river between Sharon and West Hartford includes class II rapids that run all summer and are valued by beginning kayakers and canoeists, he said.
There are “lots you can paddle in the summer and the fall,” Pollock said. But, the fact that the White River class II rapids run throughout the summer makes them “kind of unique.”
In addition, the lack of dams along the river’s main stem makes it valuable for recreation.
“It’s really neat in the state not to have to portage around a dam,” Pollock said.
Regular monitoring of the state’s rivers can help those who swim in them to feel more comfortable, Pollock said. He said he has had friends who have gone into rivers with cuts on their legs only to have them infected by bacteria in the water.
“It’s nice to (be able to) say this water is clean enough that we won’t have to worry about this,” Pollock said.
Does a lazy float down the river on a hazy July day lead to greater interest in the river’s health? Pollock thinks so. He and the White River Partnership are putting together a White River Paddle Trail map of public access sites along the river and its tributaries.
“Using it (is) more of a reason to care about the water quality,” Pollock said. “When it’s not just something (people) drive by, but something they know and use.”
A digital map of current recreational sites along the White River is available at: whiteriverpartnership.org/paddle-trail-map.
More information about the partnership’s water quality monitoring program can be found at: whiteriverpartnership.org/water-quality-monitoring.
Information about New Hampshire’s volunteer river assessment program can be found at: http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/vrap.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
