Baltimore County, MD Environmental Protection and Sustainability, 24 Jun 2019

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From YouTube: Watershed Moments - Keepers of the Stream

Description

Get an underwater and bird's eye view of the County's water quality monitoring techniques, featuring County Executive Johnny Olszewski.

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(Upbeat music).

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Hi there I'm baltimore county executive, johnny, olszewski,, and today, I'm here with sarah witcher from the baltimore county department of environmental protection and sustainability..

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Sarah, can you tell folks what we're doing out here, today.

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[Sarah] sure so I'm here with my co-worker megan brosh and we are at deep run at meadowood county park,.

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And we're taking water quality samples.

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[Johnny], that's amazing.. What do we do once we have those samples?.

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So pretty much, I'm looking for biological samples,.

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Which means I'm looking for bugs and other kinds of arthropods and critters that tell me something about the stream.

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so, depending on what I find, I'm gonna be able to tell if there's a lot of pollutants or issues with the stream, or if it's relatively clean.

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And good biologically.

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[Johnny], that's really great! So what do we do with all those samples?.

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So my part of the department basically monitors streams.

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So what that means is we take chemical samples,?

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We take samples to find out where pollutants are coming, from, from pipes that come into the stream., and then we also take biological samples, which is what we're going to be doing today., so we're gonna be picking through these rocks and kicking and collecting insects and other critters,.

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And then taking them back to look at under a microscope and that'll help us identify them.

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once we've identified them, we can tell a little bit about how this stream is doing., so it's like taking a temperature check..

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If we have a lot of organisms that are very pollution tolerant,, then that tells us that there might be some pollutant of some kind in the stream, that could be temperature or salinity or an actual chemical in the water.

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or if we have very sensitive organisms here,, then we know that this is a pretty clean stream over all.

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That sounds really interesting.. I can't wait to see those samples under a microscope in the lab, so let's go back and hit the lab and check it. Out. [sarah] cool.

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Awesome well, sarah we're back here in the lab after being out in the stream,. So what happens? Next, with all the samples we collected?.

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Okay, so we take the full sample back and we spread.

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It out here on our tray, and the idea is we actually.

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Need to sub-sample at that point., so I'll pick through and I'll pick about 120 organisms.

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Out according to my protocol, and then we look at them.

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Under the microscope and identify them., so each organism is identified down to genus levels,, so not as specific as species, just a little less specific, which is a little easier on us.

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and each genus is then assigned. What's called a tolerance value which tells you how tolerant it is of various types of pollution., like could be salinity, temperature, could be nutrients. all that kind of stuff could affect these organisms..

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So once we have a sub-sample and we've identified them to genus, then it actually would come up with a score..

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So we could put a score on all our streams and that's an easy way to communicate to people how they're doing.

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A temperature check.

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Would you like to see some of my favorite organisms here?.

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Sure, I'd love to.. What do we have here?.

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[Sarah] here we have two of the more sensitive ones., so we have a mayfly, baby, mayfly there,.

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And a larval caddisfly also.

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[Johnny] very cool. [sarah] now the caddisfly here he lives, hold onto the rocks and he's one of the interesting caddisflies that doesn't build a case.. You may have heard that caddisflies build there own little house, and this guy doesn't do that.

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Mayflies are really great to find.

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they're, pretty rare in this county..

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Only some of the best streams have them.. So what do we do to make sure that we make.

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All of our streams better and strive towards this best stream?. What can folks know.

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So there are a lot of things that we can all do..

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One common mistake: I think that people make is thinking that, just because you don't have a stream on your property or in your backyard or in your neighborhood, that you're not part of the problem or part of the solution., you definitely are.. We all live in a watershed.. We leave near the chesapeake bay..

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We all have big effects., so just as a home owner or even as a renter,, how you take care of your lawn and how you take care of the area that you own is really important.

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Less is more in general.

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you don't wanna fertilize a lot. all that fertilizer can end up in the stream and can create all kinds of problems for these critters..

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Also, everybody wants to see your perfect green.

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Lawn but weeds are beautiful too, and a lot of them have a function,, and a lot of native species have much greater ability to filter than some of the invasives that we plant in our yards..

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Another great thing to think about is, if you do have a stream, creating a buffer around that stream.. So temperature is a huge problem.

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when it gets warm and there are no trees along the stream,. It makes it impossible for these guys to live, which then affects all these things in the ecosystem.

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If you plant trees or shrubs or grasses or whatever you can near that stream to shade it,, it's gonna create a whole host of better areas for them to live. that really great.

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So less is more in yard care, and create a buffer if you can., that's, really great information.. Thank you so much for sharing that with me. Today.

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You're welcome.

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This has been a watershed moment for clean green baltimore. County. follow us on facebook @cleangreenbaltco to find out more ways. You can help keep our county clean and green.

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(water rippling and birds chirping).