Adopt-a-stream, Vol. 18, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 2011)

GEORGIA
Adopt-A-Stream
Volume 18, Number 1 January/February 2011
Allison Hughes, Tara Muenz, Editors

Department of Natural Resources Environmental Protection Division

Adopt-A-Stream in Action 2010: Meeting Our Four Goals and Beyond!

If you're an Adopt-A-Stream volunteer, you know these four goals by heart. We make these goals a top priority to explain at our workshops and trainings, and at the State Office we reflect on these often when planning for growth and development of the program. A major part of this reflection is how we can better support those who make this program happen, our volunteers! Let's take a look at how all of us, as volunteers, trainers, coordinators, and AAS Board members met these goals in 2010.
Increase Awareness The Adopt-A-Stream program works diligently to increase public awareness of water quality issues in Georgia. In 2010, we accomplished this by delivering via hard copy or e-mail, our bi-monthly newsletter to over 5,170 households statewide, providing our manuals and resources on our website and hosting some of our rarer workshops. We also strengthened our efforts and presence throughout the state, focusing on regions that do not (yet) have had an AAS presence.
Provide Tools and Training Remember all those wonderful trainers that provided you with your certifications and training? It's been an amazing and busy year for them all and we had 46 very active trainers in 2010 leading over 436 workshops, training over 2,628 volunteers! Great news too, we recruited thirteen new trainers and coordinators, and they can be found on the back page of the newsletter to see if one is near you! We also made available to volunteers replacement reagents and equipment for groups monitoring bacteria, macroinvertebrates or physical and chemical properties. New this year was our volunteer conference, the Confluence, which hosted over 140 volunteers from all over the State to meet each other, expand their knowledge in various important water quality topics, and strengthen their monitoring backgrounds.
Creating Partnerships Adopt-A-Stream puts much effort in to sustaining our partnerships and fostering the growth of new ones. Through our partnership with the Georgia River Network we assisted with their Annual Conference and Paddle Georgia 2010, a weeklong paddle on the Broad and Savannah Rivers. The Environmental Education Alliance of Georgia and Environmental Education in Georgia remain strong partners helping us connect with educators through annual conferences and online resources. The AAS Advisory Board and Community Coordinators/Trainers have been working hard on revisions to our visual and chemical monitoring programs as well as our Educator's Guide, which we expect to launch this year.
Collect Baseline Water Quality Data As we all know, collecting baseline water quality data is key to understanding the health of a waterway and determining background levels. If data is outside of the normal range, this may signal that additional measures need to be addressed. This year, baseline data was collected during 2,085 monitoring events. We had 145 new sites and 54 new groups register bringing our total active sites to 355 and active groups to 180. Way to go AAS volunteers!
( continued on page 2.)

Adopt-A-Stream in Action Continued...

Top Groups for 2010 Our Adopt-A-Stream groups devote many hours at the stream and behind the computer each month to ensure collection of baseline water quality data. We would like to recognize and honor our top ten monitoring groups with the most consistent data collection events. Thank you for all that you do to protect our most vital natural resource.

Rivers Alive 2010 The last couple of years have been exciting for Rivers Alive, maybe a little too exciting. Volunteers have dealt with the challenges of conducting cleanups during historical droughts and, as was the case in 2009, during historical flooding. Through it all, participation in cleanups has continued to grow as more groups are getting involved. If anything, the extreme weather might have helped draw attention to our rivers, lakes and coastal waters.

105 107 108 120 134

41 46 48 63 80

Lumpkin Coalition Columbia County AAS Bluecreek Monitors Bishop Lake Coosa River Basin Initiative Oconee-Savannah Target Monitoring Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper Coosawattee Watershed Association New Echota River Alliance McIntosh High School

Top 10 Monitoring Groups for 2010 (based off of total number of monitoring events)

Compared to previous years, 2010 was rather mundane; for the first time in years, the weather resembled something we might consider normal. There were no cataclysmic floods, no dry lakebeds, no extreme cold temperatures and in short, very few safety concerns. As a result, it's not surprising that we had more groups participate in 2010 than any previous year. Volunteers, organizers and sponsors can all be proud of their contribution towards protecting and preserving Georgia's water resources.

The 2010 theme, `Rivers Need You Year Round,' was a good one, and we hope to have the same level of participation in this year's cleanups. Now it's time to begin planning for another successful year, and as we do so, begin thinking about how you can engage volunteers on our theme for 2011: Water Quality. All outreach and education material - including our shirt design - will focus on this singularly important issue, the health of Georgia's water. Congratulations on another successful Rivers Alive campaign.

Going Beyond In the road ahead, look for many improvements to our monitoring programs and increased contact with volunteers. We hope to engage citizens further in the physical aspects of their waterbody, with more opportunities to learn about our visual and watershed programs. Freshwater wetland workshops and trainings are also on our list to share with the AAS community. Further assistance on how to select your sites, and how to work with the targeted needs of the State Office and EPD are other goals for us. And as always, our program welcomes comments and suggestions from you, the volunteer, so please feel free to call or write us. We would love to hear from you.

Happy Monitoring in 2011!
Adopt-A-Stream Welcomes our New Groups!
(groups registered 11/21/2009 through 01/03/2011)

Brunswick High School Science Club, Glynn County Piedmont College, Habersham County Sutton Streamkeepers, Fulton County Troop 549, Gwinnett County KSBAAS Highlands, Cobb County Boy Scout Troop 461, Liberty County

Confluence Updates
Mark your calendars and register for the upcoming AAS Confluence on Saturday, March 26th, 2011 at the Gwinnett Environmental and Heritage Center in Buford, Georgia. This will be an opportunity to meet other volunteers, share words of wisdom and receive program updates and tools for your monitoring program.
Online Registration Now Open!! Confluence information and registration can be found online at
GeorgiaAdoptAStream.org or by calling the State Office at 404.675.6240. Registration is $20.00 per person and includes Confluence materials, special edition t-shirt (if you register by March 4th), meals and door prizes.
Important Things to Note for the 2011 Event: ~Pre-registration required for some presentations ~Travel stipends available ~Rewards for `green' initiatives ~Opportunities for volunteers to present a poster or oral presentation
Agenda at a Glance:
8:00 am: Registration 9:00 am: Welcome and Opening Remarks 9:15 am: Keynote Speaker Michael Beach of the Centers for Disease Control, Healthy Water Program 10:00 am-11:30 am: Session 1
~ Macroinvertebrate Identification* ~ Landscaping to Improve Water Quality ~ Do it Yourself: Making You Own Monitoring Equipment* ~ Nutrient Testing* ~ State of Georgia's Waters ~ Clean Water Act 101 11:30 am-1:00 pm: Lunch and Awards 1:15 pm-3:10 pm: Session 2 ~ The Adopt-A-Stream Visual Monitoring Program* ~ Streambank Restoration* ~ Volunteer Presentations ~ Watershed Planning* ~ Legislative Updates ~ Regulatory Monitoring with the Environmental Protection Division ~ How to De-List Streams ~ Pharmaceutical Take Back Programs 3:30 pm-4:15 pm: Basin Breakouts 4:30 pm: Closing Remarks
* These workshops have limited space and require pre-registration. A full agenda and session descriptions are available on-line.
Sponsorship: We are still seeking conference sponsors and/or donations for our silent auction. All donations are tax deductible through our fiscal partner, the Keep Georgia Beautiful Foundation, and can be made by contacting us at AAS@gaepd or by phone at 404.675.6240.
Thank you to our Sponsors & Partners:

Thank You to Our Active QA/QC Trainers, You Are Gold to Us!
*Trainers who have led at least one QA/QC workshop in 2010

Laura Aikens Sam Booher Frank Carl Vicki Culbreth Ruth Eilers Kevin Finney Lori Forrester Scarlett Fuller Mary Gazaway Renee Gracon Darryl Haddock Harold Harbert

Mike Hill Annie Huff Allison Hughes Bob Joyner Chris Kodani John Kominoski John Malloy Melissa Martin Dan McBee Jennifer McCoy Ruth Mead Susan Meyers

Kate Mowbray James Moore Tara Muenz Robert Phillips Terry Porter David Promis Michael Reardon Melissa Rottenberg Alina Ruiz Tom Sewell Mary Carol Sheffield Tyler Sims

Kevin Smith Sharon Smith Anne Stahley Brian Sterner Cynthia Taylor William Tietjen Kelly Voss Andrew Walter Dave Wenner Brian Wiley

Welcome New Trainers and Coordinators

Jennifer Arp-Cherokee Venetia Butler-Chatham Shelly Krueger-Coastal Derrek Hay-Meriwether

Catherine Mercier Baggett-Cobb Mary Newcomb-Flint River Michael O'Shield-DeKalb Lisa Randolph-Muscogee

Alexa Robinson-Spalding Andrea Searles-Smyrna Sue Sturges-Statewide Hagan Walker-Savannah River

Andy Weed-Savannah River

Please visit our calendar of events at www.GeorgiaAdoptAStream.org for upcoming monitoring workshops and Adopt-A-Stream events.

The Georgia Adopt-A-Stream Newsletter is published six times per year. For more information about the Georgia Adopt-A-Stream program or to contribute to the newsletter, call or write to:
Georgia Adopt-A-Stream Environmental Protection Division 4220 International Parkway, Suite 101 Atlanta, GA 30354 404.675.6240 www.GeorgiaAdoptAStream.org
GEo-nBewlAuseAl!eStSt@iegrgnabueypped-f.moorragoiluinrg

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