Water water everywhere

Now that I’ve gotten over the shakeup at the coffee shop, I’ll tell you about water testing.

As I mentioned earlier, I spent last Friday and Saturday at an Alabama Water Watch workshop, learning how to test water. I’m not a fan of workshop/group activity kind of things. In fact, I’d rather shove bamboo splinters under my fingernails than sit though most such gatherings. This one, though, was kind of cool.

Friday we learned how to do chemical tests to check several things in water: pH, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen content, turbidity, etc. We went through each test and then we headed down to Big Spring in Huntsville to practice performing the tests. I wasn’t sure about it, but with the instruction book, even I was able to perform each test.

Saturday was much the same, but we focused on bacteriological testing. There are lots of bacteria that can show up in water, but they’ve found that E. coli correlates very well with all the other nasties; hence, AL Water Watch only tests for E. coli. Of course there’s still the problem that formal tests for E. coli are expensive, time consuming, and require sophisticated equipment. Some guy in Maryland, though, came up with a simple, yet ingenious, solution that is easy and only costs about a dollar a test. You do have to “incubate” your sample for 30 hours, but that’s not hard. Once you’ve done that, you just count the blue dots (the E. coli colonies).

When I left Huntsville Saturday I was all hyped up to start water testing. Now, though, I’m not so sure. I still think I’d like to do it, but two things are holding me back – the cost of the testing kit and the time commitment. The initial kit costs $250, but if you test 9 times a year AWW will replenish your kit for free. I’m not crazy about spending $250 on a box of chemicals, a thermometer, and some Plexiglas vials, but the kit cost is not the biggest obstacle for me. No, to me the time commitment is part I’m not sure about. It all sounds fun right now, but they’d like you to test once a month and I’m just not sure I’d get around to the local creek that often. Actually, I do have a stream picked out that I’d like to track, but I’m just sure I’d keep at it. I still remember my childhood fiasco with guitar lessons.

Still, I’d like to start doing this and I think I will. I just have to take the plunge, order my kit, and start doing it. In an attempt to find other reasons to do it, I sent an email to one of our biology guys, asking if he’d be interested in me doing a “demonstration” for some of his classes each semester. I figured that’d give me even more of an incentive. Sure enough, he emailed back and said it sounded great.

So, I haven’t decided for sure, but I’m thinking I’ll start water testing. Maybe in January; that’s when everyone makes new resolutions, right? Of course most people’s resolutions don’t involve environmental testing, but I’m kind of different.