Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County
Fall Creek Watershed Committee Minutes
November 22, 1999
McLean Firehouse

Present: Yvette de Boer, Robert Faust, Charles Hatfield, Steve Penningroth, Ray Rabeler, Craig Schutt, Jim Skaley, Marshall Taylor, Sharon Anderson

New Members: Charles Hatfield - Tompkins County Farmer and member of the Dryden Town Board. Yvette de Boer - Ithaca teacher and SUNY-ESF graduate student in environmental management.

FL-LOWPA

A proposal for $4500 was submitted to the Finger Lakes - Lake Ontario Wateshed Protection Alliance (FL-LOWPA) to support citizen-based monitoring in the Fall Creek watershed. If awarded the funds will be used to purchase monitoring equipment and supplies, and to pay training expenses.

Water Quality Monitoring

The group discussed a number of topics related to monitoring.

• Why is citizen-based monitoring important? To support/work with DEC and others who have concerns and responsibilities to maintain and improve water quality in the watershed. DEC has inadequate resources and must rely upon local citizens to discover and alert them to problems. County has not taken leadership in establishing a monitoring program.

• What should be monitored? Those things that give the broadest picture of the water quality, including: temperature, dissolved oxygen content, phosphate, pH chlorine, fecal coliform, nitrate, biological activity in the creeks.

• It was noted that water quality concerns are related to land use concerns. This group needs to start out by talking to people. What are local resident's watershed concerns? If there are a number of monitoring groups (teams) formed then each group can identify own problems, determine when and where sampling will take place, and work out the methods of reporting back to their own communities and to the larger FCWC group.

• Steve Penningroth is preparing for hands-on monitoring workshops. He will work with volunteer monitors, teaching about chemical monitoring, and has found other volunteers who will help the group learn about biological monitoring.

• Next steps include recruiting for the first of the monitoring workshops. It will look at simple tests and procedures. Following workshops will build from there.

• The group had a general discussion about vision. It was generally agreed that we had to find a way to reach out to a diverse set of interests in the watershed and that we should not just concentrate on the farming community. Just because the farming community is relatively easy to identify does not mean that it should be focused on too much.

• The FCWC need to establish a big enough group of participants so that creek can be monitored all along the watershed

• This group's focus is "citizens reassuring themselves" about their watershed, not a research project

Action steps

Focus on workshop

• How to recruit (for monitoring teams)? Ideas included asking: Trout Unlimited, Izaak Walton League, Cayuga Trails Club, Dryden teachers, parents with kids in groups such as 4-H and Scouts, Farm Bureau and Grange, approaching Cornell which gets its water supply from Fall Creek, targeting people who live right along the Fall Creek and its tributaries with leaflets placed in their paper boxes.

• As the above groups are approached, we need to develop a method of finding out what people are concerned about. It will help motivate people if the FCWC can be shown to be helping to address individual concerns.

• Question? : What will happen with the data collected? Concerns were expressed that citizen efforts won't make a difference and that the efforts will just cause problems in terms of public pressure and environmental interest groups. Everyone involved will have a different perspective about what should happen and what reactions to increasing our knowledge about the watershed are good or bad reactions. If we keep the emphasis on learning and passing along what we learn to our communities, then we will increase the chance of good results and, through communication, decrease the potential for harm.

• Workshop: A date was set for the first Water Quality Monitoring workshop (1/22/2000). The place is yet to be decided but could be at Steve Penningroth's laboratory at Cornell.

Next meeting(s)

For the next meeting we will have a report on monitoring (progress so far) and we will work on building participation. Sharon Anderson will contact DEC, in an effort to have a representative come discuss/share about Fall Creek, monitoring & stocking programs.

At a future meeting we will get somebody from Caroline Watersheds Committee (Penny Boynton?) to attend. They will be asked to discuss: What have they done?; Their successes?; Pitfalls which they found and we might be able to avoid?

Next meeting set for: Monday, Jan. 10, 2000 at 7:30. Place: TBA.

Courtesy of the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network, minutes of the FCWC meetings and additional information about Fall Creek can be found on the Internet at: www.cayugalake.org/fallcreek

sharon anderson/WRTC/Fall Creek/99-11-22 mins.doc