CALGARY
Calgary

    • Creekwatch keeping track of several tributaries in Calgary

    Share
    CALGARY -

    Urban environments are not always friendly to waterways. They're typically a catch all for harmful, man-made pollutants, everything from fertilizer to harmful chemicals.

    But a group of volunteers lead by CreekWatch Tributary Stormwater Monitoring staff take weekly water samples from five creeks and two rivers in Calgary.

    The provincial organization has been collecting data for the last seven years.

    CreekWatch is part of the RiverWatch Institute of Alberta, where Reed Froklage is its citizen science program manager.

    "People care for what they know," said Froklage. "So by engaging members of the public in our volunteer base, they're better to understand their local water quality."

    The purpose of CreekWatch is to collect frequent and reputable data on tributaries that feed larger rivers in Alberta. Through data collection a consistent baseline set of information is established and shared with all stakeholders.

    Staff are collecting information from West Nose Creek using a variety of tools.

    "We test for dissolved oxygen, invertebrates, nitrogen, phosphorus," said Cleo Maier a water quality monitor. "Really basic things that indicate the quality of water in the creek."

    As the flow of the creek is calculated, Maier and Kip Monaghan look for aquatic life in the rain-swelled tributary.

    "There's a couple indicator species like stone flies or May flies that help us determine if the creek is healthy," said Monaghan. "We're seeing a lot more of those now that things have come up a little bit and we've got a little more water flowing through there."

    Froklage says earlier in August, many creeks in Calgary were ankle deep or lower. Those low levels combined with long stretches of extremely high temperatures are not good for what lives underwater.

    "There's a certain threshold that works for the creeks," said Froklage. "Once you kind of breech that temperature threshold it isn't very good for any of the aquatic life so generally here it's 18-20 degrees, once you get above that it's not ideal for our aquatic populations here."

    Emma Stalker is in her first year working with CreekWatch and saw how high river and creek flows were in April mostly from snow melting in Calgary and west to the mountains.

    "So we had a high this summer of 360-metres-per-second of water, square metres in the Bow River which was really cool," said Stalker. "So I was trained on high water and now over the last couple of weeks we've had the river go down all the way to around 70."

    The team records their data and then moves onto the next collection site.

    "The main thing that we're doing is we're making this information public," said Maier. "We're combating a lot of miss information about the water quality in the city and we're showing that it is very healthy but we have to maintain it."

    Learn more about CreekWatch online.

    CTVNews.ca Top Stories

    Shopping Trends

    The Shopping Trends team is independent of the journalists at CTV News. We may earn a commission when you use our links to shop. Read about us.

    Edmonton

    Lethbridge

    Vancouver

    Vancouver Island

    Saskatoon

    Regina

    Toronto

    Montreal

    Atlantic

    Winnipeg

    Ottawa

    Northern Ontario

    Barrie

    Kitchener

    London

    Windsor

    Stay Connected
    Follow CTV News