The Watchdogs

By Highland Outdoors on July 30, 2024

There are nearly 300 named rivers, streams, and creeks that spread their sinuous paths across the Mountain State like the dendritic patterns of tree branches. There are seemingly countless other unnamed troughs, rivulets, and ephemeral drainages that carry runoff to these major waterways at any given time throughout the year.

Many of our state's great mountain rivers begin their journeys within our borders. This water spills down, eventually making its way to major U.S. cities like Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., providing drinking water to millions of Americans.

It's patently obvious that everyone—and everything—needs water to survive. But given the collateral damage caused by the development of industry, energy, and infrastructure, it's also obvious that much of our natural water supply is tainted. Ask someone to drink a glass of water straight out of a river, and you'll likely get a response along the lines of "Hell no!"

While there are regulations to protect our water, the reality is that those rules often don't go far enough. And even when they do, oftentimes state and federal agencies don't have the resources to enforce them. The WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Watershed Assessment Branch simply can't employ enough water quality monitors to accomplish the herculean task of keeping tabs on West Virginia's numerous waterways.

Cheat River WV — The Cheat River, once severely polluted by acid mine drainage, has recovered due to effective policy and decades of remediation efforts by Friends of the Cheat and dedicated volunteers. Photo by Dylan Jones

Fortunately, there are throngs of concerned citizens volunteering for the West Virginia-Virginia Water Quality Monitoring (WQM) program. Started in 2013, the WQM is an ongoing collaboration between West Virginia Rivers (WV Rivers) and Trout Unlimited (TU) that trains volunteers to monitor impacts in their local waterways. These volunteers act as aquatic watchdogs, keeping an eye on the industrial practices that threaten our water supply. "It's essentially a localized red alert system to effectively identify and document water quality issues," says TU monitoring and community science manager Jake Lemon.

According to Lemon, TU initially started the program to monitor the impacts of shale gas development on high-quality, coldwater trout streams. TU quickly joined forces with WV Rivers to expand the program into the Virginias and adapt protocol to focus on impacts of pipeline and road construction on warmwater streams.

TU handed over management of the WQM program to WV Rivers in 2018, allowing WV Rivers to get funding from and supply data to the DEP to coordinate when water quality issues arise. "The DEP can't be everywhere all at once. We like to think of our water quality monitoring program as a compliment to that," says Jenna Dodson, WV Rivers staff scientist and WQM program manager. "It's always helpful to have more data."

Dodson has been in charge of the WQM program for two years. Previously, she coordinated Adopt-A-Stream, a statewide monitoring program in Georgia. "I used to be a volunteer water monitor myself. You can establish a strong connection to a place and see a stream change throughout the seasons," she says.

The scale of the WQM program is impressive. Over the last decade, 163 volunteers completed 7,913 monitoring events across 525 sites in West Virginia and Virginia. On average, 2.5 samples have been collected every day since the program's inception. Volunteers recorded 1,546 monitoring events in 2018, the most in a single year, which coincided with the height of natural gas pipeline construction in the region. "We have great volunteers that are so committed and energized around this," says Lemon. "In my opinion, this has been the most successful citizen science program that TU has implemented nationwide."

While there are many threats to our water supply, the WQM sampling protocol specifically checks for impacts ranging from increases in water temperature and sedimentation from erosion to toxic threats like acid mine drainage (AMD) and per-and-polyfluorinated substances (PFAS).

Water Quality Monitoring — The North Fork of the Blackwater is a beautiful stream that is unfortunately impacted by acid mine drainage. Photo by Rick Burgess

Increases in water temperature, which equate to lower amounts of dissolved oxygen, are particularly hard on native brook trout, which require shaded, cold streams to survive. Dodson also says sedimentation, which often occurs from road and pipeline construction, can clog fish gills, disturb life cycles for macroinvertebrates, and even bond with toxic particles before entering a waterway.

It may be easy to spot the tell-tale orange staining of rocks from AMD or notice an increase in the cloudiness of water, but we can't see or smell chemicals like PFAS. "You can't really detect them unless you're testing for them. Anytime we make our water more polluted, it's going to be more expensive and difficult to treat the water to be able to drink it," Dodson says.

Those who like to recreate in West Virginia's waterways are also at risk of infection from bacteria like E. coli and fecal coliform. Poor sanitary practices like leaky septic systems and straight-piping of raw sewage are often to blame. "Unfortunately, many of our rivers that are well known for recreation also have high levels of bacteria. It's an issue that some people don't like to talk about, but that's the reality," says Dodson.

Fortunately, the WQM program tests for all these threats. When volunteers head out on a monitoring mission, they perform a battery of tests for parameters like pH (the acidity of the water), conductivity (how much electrical current the water conducts), and turbidity (how cloudy the water is). They also record the weather, stream level, and water temperature and snap a photo to send with the data submission. The data is collected and curated by WV Rivers before it's sent to the DEP.

The sampling protocol is rigorous, and some volunteers, like Chris Byrd, sample certain sites every two weeks. Byrd, who is a longtime angler and TU member, has been sampling since the program's inception. He currently monitors five streams spanning four counties that face the full gamut of threats from shale fracking, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and the construction of Corridor H. "We're not out trying to stop anything, we just want to make sure things are done right," he says. "We all live in this watershed together."

Byrd monitors three of these sites with his friend, Randy Peasley, also a 10-year WQM program veteran. "Someone needs to do it, and it's a way to give something back. Randy and I are both retired, so there's a bit of a social aspect to it as well," he says.

Byrd says that regular monitoring allows scientists to establish a normal range for water quality parameters on a specific stream so that when something goes awry, action can be taken to identify the source of the issue and notify the DEP. But the benefits of regular monitoring go beyond the data. According to Dodson, when project developers are being watched, they are more likely to comply with environmental regulations, like construction of silt fences to control erosion.

Substrate measurement — A tool is used to measure the size of stream substrate. Photo courtesy WV Rivers

Although the WQM volunteer makeup skews toward retired folks, young volunteers have recently joined the ranks, including 26-year-old Molly Sutter. Hailing from Philadelphia and working as a caretaker on a farm in Summers County, Sutter became involved when she and her neighbors noticed impacts from the Mountain Valley Pipeline crossing their local stream of Hungard Creek and the Greenbrier River. "While driving past construction of the pipelines every day, you could see it disrupting the hills and causing a lot of erosion," she says. "We became concerned about our water. Now that I know this stream and river so well, I care and want to protect them."

As humanity places ever-increasing pressure on our natural resources, an increase in passionate citizen watchdogs like Byrd and Sutter can help minimize impacts. But Byrd thinks that monitoring alone isn't enough—he wants to see our legislature strengthen environmental regulations instead of weakening them. "We lighten up instead of tighten up, but that's just the political landscape right now," he says. "I wish people would appreciate what a resource cold, clean water is, and how little you really have to do to protect it."

Dodson says that despite all the negative press about "forever chemicals" like PFAS and industrial impacts from pipelines, there's good news, too. Over her time at WV Rivers, she's noticed an increase in societal awareness about the importance and value of clean water.

To capitalize on these growing public concerns, WV Rivers has teamed up with other watershed groups when interests align. Friends of the Cheat assigns volunteers to monitor streams impacted by the continued construction of Corridor H in Randolph and Tucker counties, and the Warm Springs Watershed Association trains volunteers in the WQM protocol to monitor streams in the path of the new 522 Bypass near Berkeley Springs.

Dodson also pointed to the Chesapeake Bay Agreement, a landmark 2014 accord that established water quality goals for the Chesapeake Bay watershed, a small portion of which lies in Monroe County in the Eastern Panhandle. According to Dodson, out of all the jurisdictions involved in the seven-state project area, West Virginia has been doing the best on hitting its water quality goals. "I feel like people have their stereotypes about West Virginia, but in this case, we are a leader," she says. "I want to see a future where all of our waters in West Virginia become swimmable, drinkable, and fishable."

Waterfall in WV — Clear, clean water cascades on Flat Rock Run Falls in the Monongahela National Forest. Photo by Dylan Jones

With the right policies in place and hard work from dedicated groups, it's amazing how quickly water quality can improve—just look to the amazing recovery of the Cheat River from AMD pollution. In just a few decades, a future where all our rivers run clear, when we don't have to worry about what's in the water before we get in, suddenly starts to seem possible.

For that future to happen, we need these aquatic watchdogs to keep eyes on our streams, and we as citizens need to keep putting pressure on our leaders to prioritize clean water for all. "I'd like to see a recognition that water is worth protecting because this is the birthplace of rivers" Sutter says. "Everything relies on water. It's like the mountains and the streams are saying, 'We have given you a lot, and now it's time for you to give back.'"

Become a watchdog! To get involved, contact your local watershed group to see if there are existing monitoring efforts to join. To join the WQM program, contact WV Rivers to schedule a training session.