CSC Stream Team studying area's water resources

About a dozen faculty members and 34 students who make up the CSC Stream Team are nearing the culmination of a year-long study of the resources in the Chadron Creek watershed. The Stream Team will take its findings to Washington, D.C., on April 19 for the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual Sustainable Design Conference. While there, the team will join about 40 other higher education projects in competing for a $75,000 grant in the P3 Award competition.

Chadron Creek begins near the top of the Pine Ridge about 12 miles south of Chadron and converges with the White River a few miles west of the city after it descends about 1,000 feet in elevation. Much of the watershed was burned in the wildfires of 2006.

Dr. Mike Leite, a CSC geoscience professor who serves as the project’s principal investigator, said that that availability of water along the creek is becoming threatened. A northern section of the creek went dry this summer, which group members say is cause for concern.

“The great thing about Chadron Creek is that it had been flowing year around, even though we’ve been in a drought, because of the springs,” Leite said. “For the first time in the memory of people who have lived here for many decades, it went dry this year in the heat of the summer. That’s a frightening occurrence.”

Leite said some of the stresses on the High Plains Aquifer can be found outside the watershed.

“We can project all sorts of dire consequences because of what we see happening around us. The wellfield that Chadron has to the south is directly on the edge of this huge agricultural pumping area in north Box Butte County that is literally going to drain our water supply off to the south. Not only from the well field, but from Chadron Creek itself.”

He also said the increasing number of trees near the creek, which did not burn in the wildfires, also are causing a drain on the water supply.

“Trees are nice, of course, but they use a lot of water. Their roots are going down into the aquifer,” he said.

On the bright side, the group has not found any alarming problems with the water’s quality. Leite said organizers expected to find issues with water quality because of ash from the wildfires that burned thousands of acres south of Chadron and threatened the city.

“We were expecting an effect on the water quality from the ash, but we haven’t actually seen that,” he said. “We’ll see if there’s an effect from that during the runoff this spring.”

Organizers say the project has created a spirit of cooperation among varying disciplines on campus, government agencies and others stakeholders in the community.

The Stream Team has collected a full year’s worth of data during sampling days every few months. At each sampling, students spend 7-10 hours collecting data at about 10 sites along the watershed. The students gained access to the sites by approaching landowners and other public agencies.

The student leader for the project is Jennifer Balmat of Chadron, a senior geoscience student. She is in charge of coordinating all the student activities and recruiting participants. She is especially close to the project, being the one who stumbled across a brochure about the award competition. After approaching Leite and other faculty members, a grant was received from the EPA and the Chadron project was born.

The national P3 Award competition was launched by the EPA in 2004 to respond to challenges of the developed and develping world in moving toward sustainability – the idea of supporting the needs of a resource’s stakeholders without depleting its resources. Through the award process, college students research, develop and design scientific, technical and policy solutions to sustainability challenges. P3 is short for “people, prosperity and the planet.”

Leite said the group is finding success in its goal of interdisciplinary cooperation and development of a message for members of the community who may not understand how the resources are being threatened.

“The greatest accomplishment has been the cohesiveness of the group,” Leite said. “People from all of these different disciplines can cooperate, communicate and help each other out. It’s not just a science group any more. We have a solid group of people from across the campus, including students in communication arts, history, economics and range management.”

In order to relay findings to the community and gain input, the group presented its information at the Dawes County Fairgrounds in late 2007. Posters for each facet of the study outlined the room. However, attendance at that event was smaller than anticipated because of a snowstorm, which paradoxically was welcomed by the group for the moisture it brought. The group plans to have another community session and has weekly meetings that are open to the public. Those meetings are Fridays at 4 p.m.

Dr. Ron Burke, one of two CSC economics professors involved in the project, said it has been a positive experience for the professors and the two economics students who have been collecting data with help from area agencies. He said it can serve as an example for future college projects to become engaged in community betterment.

“We tend to be stuck in our own little hole,” he said. “This project has helped us get out and work with people at CSC and the community who we normally wouldn’t work with.”

The economics students have collected data from the City of Chadron, U.S. Forest Service, Upper White-Niobrara Natural Resources District. Burke said the cooperation from those agencies has been outstanding.

Burke said a decrease in the availability of water will have a widespread economic impact. For instance, if the water table declines, people will need to spend money to drill deeper wells.

Leite and Dr. Chuck Butterfield, CSC range management professor, will lead 17 students on the trip to Washington. The day before their departure, students and faculty members will present at the Nebraska Academy of Sciences annual meeting at Lincoln.

At the NAS meeting, CSC students and professors will present information about 10 different topics from their Stream Team studies. They include the historical perspective of civic wather projects, chemistry of water quality, analysis of fecal coliform bacteria, economic impacts of the Spotted Tail fire, macroinvertebrate assessment, rangeland and upland forest health, fish, geology, and discharge of the creek.

For the Washington conference, the group will consolidate all of the information for presentation at one booth that explains the project.

“We need to distill all of these different projects into one message,” he said. “What is it that we actually accomplished? Where are we going with this?”

Regardless of the results in Washington, Leite said the project has already been successful on many counts.

“There is very strong interest among the students and everybody has pulled together on it. It’s been a lot of work for them. Nobody’s gotten paid for anything and everybody’s working really hard.”

 

Photo Information: Students Austin Butterfield, Craig Kaiser, Kimberly Davis and Shaine Odell measure the width and depth of a point at the first site in the Stream Team's research trip Nov. 11, 2007 (Photo by Daniel Binkard).