BRISTOL -- Having cleaned up the Pequabuck River and stocked it with salmon fry, the local riverwatch group will next inspect the stream bed and start collecting water samples and other data to help determine the water quality. Chet Reed, president of the Pequabuck River Watershed Association, said the group will be doing stream walks "just to monitor the river." Members will walk sections of the river, said Reed, looking for signs of good health and signs of trouble. Mary Moulton, treasurer of the Pequabuck River group, said it is working with the Farmington River Watershed Association on the streambed inspection. "They started it last year, trying to walk the main stem of the Farmington River," Moulton said. Volunteers take a segment of the river and are given a set of protocols for recording the information, she said. "The goal is to find out what’s going on in the river itself," Moulton said. They’ll count inflow pipes or other places where water is coming into the river. "If there’s something weird going on, that’s noted so it can be followed up," Moulton said.
The water quality in the rivers has deteriorated, said Moulton, and the goal is to find out why and how to correct it. "Part of the problem the Pequabuck has is we don’t have a lot of volume to the river," Moulton said. "In the driest months, the bulk of the flow of the river has passed through the sewage treatment plants." ometimes that helps, Moulton said, because the plants do a good job of controlling bacteria, but it isn’t always for the best. For the most part, volunteers will get to choose the section of the river that they’ll walk, she said. They’ll note discharges into the river, the condition of the banks and what the banks are composed of, as well as what kind of vegetation abuts the river and how wide the vegetation zone is, she said. If they see wildlife, they’ll note that, too. Pramod Pandey, secretary of the Pequabuck River group, said finding insects and small animals in the river during the stream walk would show that it is supporting life. Pandey said he’s not sure yet what sections of the river will be studied during the stream walks. They visually inspect the river bed," Pandey said. "If they find anything unusual, they write it down." How much life the Pequabuck is supporting is an indication of the quality of the water in the stream, according to Pandey, and the more life, the merrier. "If you don’t see anything, that means there’s something wrong," Pandey said. Anyone interested in helping with the stream walks, Reed said, may attend volunteer training workshop at Sessions Woods June 11 from 8:15 a.m. to noon. To sign up or to get more information, Moulton can be reached at 589-4708.
Reed said the group’s ongoing water sampling program will also take place later this summer. "We could always use help," Reed said. Sampling is done in July and August.
Samples of water are taken along the river from Harwinton to Plainville, said Reed, and tested for harmful E. coli bacteria, phosphates and other potential contaminants. "We send it to a lab," said Reed. Reed said people who collect the samples don’t have to go in the water, but they can. "You can either wade in or take samples from the shore," he said. The group has been collecting water samples for about five years along with the Farmington River group, said Reed, as part of a larger effort to keep track of the Connecticut River. Reed said they’ve noted a problem sometimes with high levels of E. coli or phosphorus in the Pequabuck. Pandey said the E. coli could be coming from a failing septic system somewhere in the watershed, but said it is difficult to locate. In the fall, Pandey said, the group will stock trout in the Pequabuck. In April, the Pequabuck River group took part in a cleanup that Pandey said netted trash including a shopping cart and a bicycle discarded in the river. This month, said Reed, his group helped release 17,000 salmon fry into the river. The salmon stocking program is an effort by the state Department of Environmental Protection to reintroduce Atlantic salmon to the Connecticut River and its tributaries. While setting 17,000 baby salmon into the water might seem impressive, Reed said his group has been helping the DEP with the project for years. "It’s not a big undertaking," said Reed. "We got it down to a science." The salmon, which theoretically would return to the Pequabuck to spawn, never make it back, Reed said, because any returning salmon are stopped at Rainbow Dam on the Farmington River, where that river joins the Connecticut River. The results of years of salmon stocking have been disappointing, but it’s unclear why. "The returns are very low," Reed said.
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