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2012 Snapshot Day – Getting a Complete Water Quality Picture of Reno/Tahoe
Reno Tahoe residents, want to roll up your sleeves and do something about water quality in our region? The 8th annual Water Quality Snapshot Day needs volunteers Saturday, May 10.
This is a cause near and dear to our hearts here at Western Environmental Testing Laboratory – WETLAB, and we’ve worked as team leaders since the beginning. But you don’t need to be a water quality expert – you just need to care about our regions rivers, lakes and streams.
The idea is to get volunteers from all around Lake Tahoe and along the Truckee River to Pyramid Lake to take water quality samples in order to create a holistic picture of our region’s water. The event not only provides valuable data to area researchers on a large scale, but it’s also a great excuse to get outside and enjoy our region’s beautiful waterways!
All you have to do is meet for a brief orientation at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, May 10. Reno area volunteers will meet at Bartley Ranch Regional Park, 6000 Bartley Ranch Road.
Truckee area volunteers will meet at the Sagehen Field Station, about 10 miles north of Truckee on Highway 89 North.
North Lake Tahoe volunteers will meet at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, and South Lake Tahoe volunteers will meet at the Lake Tahoe Community College cafeteria.
Volunteers will be lead by trained group leaders, fanning out across our watershed to various locations on a variety of streams and tributaries, testing for dissolved oxygen, conductivity, pH and temperature, also collecting water samples for laboratory analysis of nutrients, sediments and bacteria. All this data will give important insights into the health of our waterways. You’ll also learn interesting information about our watershed from your team leader.
To sign up as a volunteer, call Mary Kay Riedl at 775-687-9454 for Reno area, Beth Christman at 530-550-8760 for the Truckee area or Susie Kocher at 530-542-2571 for Lake Tahoe.
Map showing the Truckee River drainage basin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At the 15th annual Lake Tahoe Summit in Homewood, CA this summer, hosted by Senator Dianne Feinstein and attended by Senator Harry Reid, Senator Dean Heller, California Governor Jerry Brown and Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, policy makers came up with an important plan for Lake Tahoe.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to restore the lake’s clarity to 97.4 feet by 2076, a lofty goal aiming for historic levels before runoff and pollution clouded the mountain lake’s clear waters.
Most recent measurements have the lake’s clarity – measured by lowering a white disk (called a Secchi disk) into the water and seeing how far down it can still be spotted – at 64.4 feet.
The plan, developed by the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection, is called the Total Maximum DailyLoad (TMDL), capping the amount of pollution and runoff working its way into the lake – particularly from urban storm water runoff.
It calls for area jurisdictions – the City of South Lake Tahoe, the bordering county governments in both California and Nevada and their respective road departments, to reduce sediment going into the lake by 32 percent over the next 15 years – and that’s where precise water quality monitoring comes into play.
Not only do sediments and pollutants have to be monitored, but nutrients as well, which can cause algae blooms that dramatically cloud the water. The plan targets fine sediments (which tend to “hang” in the water rather than settling to the bottom of the lake), phosphorus, and nitrogen pollutants.
Top sources of those contaminants being targeted include urban and forest storm water runoff, stream channel erosion and atmospheric deposition.
When government agencies take steps like stabilizing and re-vegetating road shoulders and eroding slopes, street sweeping, better landscaping, runoff treatment and filtration, the creation of wetlands, the re-vegetation of ski slopes, and other projects – close monitoring will be necessary to measure success.
And success is critical, considering the plan could cost as much as $100 million per year for the next 15 years, according to the Lahontan regional Water Quality Control Board, so monitoring will insure that is money well spent.
Despite the controversy that has surrounded it since its inception, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency has been the most effective funding funnel that Lake Tahoe environmental projects have ever seen. Hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental restoration work has been brought to the Tahoe Basin through Tahoe’s unique, bi-state planning organization.
Recently, however, the agency has been under fire like never before. A bill introduced in the Nevada legislature threatens to pull out of the agency if certain significant changes are not made to the way the agency operates. Just days ago, the bill passed the Nevada legislature, and it now awaits the governor’s signature to become law.
For background on the controversy surrounding the TRPA, and details on the Nevada bill that threatens to pull out of the agency by 2015, visit these links:
http://www.moonshineink.com/articles.php/0/2355
http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20110607/NEWS/110609908/1056&parentprofile=1056
Do you work in environmental restoration, water monitoring or regulation at Lake Tahoe? What would the dissolution of the TRPA mean for your business? What are your opinions about Lake Tahoe’s environmental future without a bi-state planning agency?
To share your thoughts, look us up on Facebook and post your comments on our page.
Western Environmental Testing Laboratory
SPARKS OFFICE
475 E. Greg St, Suite 119
Sparks, NV 89431
Monday – Friday (8:00 am – 6:00 pm)
(775) 355-0202 – Phone
(775) 355-0817 – Fax
Lake Tahoe snowmelt floods water sampling labs, hydrologists with work
A web of agencies and scientists work day and night each spring to monitor the aquatic health of one of North America’s most majestic alpine lakes
In the world of water quality monitoring, there is perhaps no more majestic setting or no more intense industry epicenter than Lake Tahoe.
Twenty-two miles long, more than 1,500 feet deep — and surrounded by vacation homes, ski resorts, casinos and lodges — Tahoe is the perfect mix of jaw-dropping, crystalline natural treasure and highway- and home-ringed recreation Mecca that has fueled an intense, long-term web of water quality monitoring programs to gauge the lake’s aquatic health.
Over the span of more than 50 years, scientists have deployed all throughout the year, all across the lake, to gauge sediment loading, nutrient concentrations and water clarity.
But one time of year — when the mountains of snow that ring that lake begin to slowly succumb to the spring’s long days and warm sun — brings of a flood of water quality monitoring work to sampling labs, scientists, non-profit groups and regulators.
The few weeks when spring runoff intensifies — swelling streams and filling the lake with fresh snowmelt — is one of the most critical annual cycles for the clarity of the lake. It is then that agencies can gauge if BMPs (Best Management Practices) are filtering road grime and sediment from construction sites, driveways and roadways. It is then that the effects of the millions of dollars that are regularly invested in catch basins, filtration ponds, and stream and wetland restoration are calculated.
Hydrologists, volunteers and laboratories are flooded with work, literally working day and night to pinpoint the effect of stormwater drainage on one of the world’s most studied bodies of water.
“If [runoff peaks] at 12 o’ clock at night on Christmas day, you go out a monitor then because you don’t want to miss that. Often you are out there in the middle of the night or on weekends,” said John Reuter, associate director of U.C. Davis’s Tahoe Environmental Research Center.
While the waters of Lake Tahoe have been monitored since 1958, agencies have only recently been examining the precise effects of stormwater drainage on Lake Tahoe’s water quality. In 2003, in conjunction with the EPA-mandated Total Maximum Daily Load program, agencies began sampling 16 stormwater sites around the lake. The results confirmed that 70 percent of the fine particles that end up clouding Lake Tahoe’s clarity are coming from urban sites.
Lake Tahoe’s three pollutants of concern — Phosphorous, Nitrogen and fine sediment — are tested and gauged by agency and private labs in the region. Phosphorous and nitrogen stimulate algae growth in the lake, which clouds the lake’s clarity, and sediment that is five times less thick than a human hair, gets suspended in the water, also impairing Tahoe’s famed crystalline waters.
Laboratories like nearby Sparks, Nev.-based WETLAB brace for the flood of laboratory work that each spring runoff season brings.
WETLAB’s state-of-the-art lab was built in 2006 to accommodate the increasing monitoring workload of water analysis from nearby agencies, mining regulators and environmental non-profits. The lab’s business, built on all types of regulatory compliance and environmental restoration work — from Lake Tahoe water testing to environmental testing around mining sites — has boomed in the past year. WETLAB has grown revenue by nearly 30 percent in the last year and hired over 11 full- and part-time employees.
“WETLAB braces for spring each year, knowing that snowmelt means our busy season is here,” said Michelle Sherven, president of WETLAB. “We have even added services, like a dedicated shuttle between our lab and Lake Tahoe, to help busy agencies and non-profit complete important water tests on time during the tense runoff months.”
The precision of the water quality testing is incredibly important as the results guide heavy federal, state and local investment in the environmental future of the lake.
Some of the fixes to the stormwater pollutants that run off of roads, driveways and roofs are simple and common — street sweeping to catch sediment before it is washed into the lake or filtration basins. But when dealing with very fine sediment and minute particles that wash swiftly from shoreline urban areas into the lake, some unique, cutting-edge solutions to Lake Tahoe’s stormwater pollution are being considered, said Reuter.
Ideas like a “pump-and-treat” system — where stormwater is pumped uphill to a man-made filtration area or a natural watershed where the sediment can slowly filter out of the water before it reaches the lake — are being talked about.
Whatever direction the efforts to maintain and restore Lake Tahoe’s famed water clarity take, springtime will continue to be a critical season for scientists, regulators and laboratories to gauge the condition of one of the nation’s most treasured natural wonders.
One of the national epicenters of water quality monitoring, just minutes away from the WETLAB offices in Sparks, Nevada, is gearing up for even more analysis. Lake Tahoe is known around the world as one of the world’s clearest large alpine lakes — and federal, state and local efforts are all concentrated on restoring and preserving the lake’s astounding clarity intact.
In late November, the regional water board that governs the Tahoe Basin approved an aggressive plan to reduce the amount of fine sediment, phosphorous, and nitrogen entering the lake, which are some of the main culprits behind the lake’s steady clarity decline. Over the next 15 years, up to $1.5 billion could be spent to increase the lake’s clarity from last year’s 68-foot depth, to 80 feet, according to news reports.
For agencies and restoration groups around the lake, the new water quality targets mean more water quality analysis to determine which restoration projects are working and how much sediment, phosphorous, and nitrogen is entering the lake. That analysis and lab work is WETLAB’s specialty. Given the increase in water quality monitoring occurring in Tahoe, WETLAB is reminding agencies and non-profits around Lake Tahoe of WETLAB’s convenient regular sample pick-up and material drop-off service to Lake Tahoe.
A WETLAB employee regularly travels to Lake Tahoe to collect water samples and bring them back to WETLAB’s state-of-the-art Sparks, Nevada laboratory for careful testing and analysis.
A WETLAB representative travels to South Lake Tahoe every Tuesday, and to North Lake Tahoe every Thursday for sample collection and instrument drop-off. WETLAB is also willing to work out other collection days for new and existing clients if possible.
WETLAB is proud to be part of the restoration of one of the nation’s natural wonders.
