Title
Date
5-7-2004
Document Type
Presentation
School
North Attleborough High School, North Attleborough, Massachusetts
Teacher
Donna Cochrane
Students
Mike O’Hear, Shannon Raymond, Jackie Cieri, Kaitlyn Menyo, Kyle Pfantz, and Andrew Cerrone
Description
In the past year, North Attleboro High School’s environmental science class has been conducting an intense study of the Ten Mile River. The focus of our study is to find out detailed information regarding the biological, physical, and chemical state of the river.
The Ten Mile River is the main river within North Attleboro. It runs down to Narragansett Bay and flows through many other local towns. The watersheds are located in North Attleboro and Plainville. The river begins at Cargill Pond in Plainville and flows 61 miles through North Attleboro, Attleboro, Plainville, and Seekonk before going into Rhode Island.
We studied two sites along the river within Bristol County. The first site was Cedar Street located in North Attleboro right before a local wastewater treatment plant. The second location that we studied was Water Street in Attleboro located at a confluence with Bungay River.
We only visited each site once on the river. We compared the two sites with pH testing, E Coli testing, Temperature testing, Dissolved Oxygen testing, Nitrogen testing, Fecal Coliform testing, and Benthic Macro Invertebrate testing. The results show that the two locations we tested are vastly different.
We concluded that Water Street was in a lot worse condition than Cedar Street. Water Street had higher fecal counts than Cedar Street. Water Street had a higher MGBI (Major Group Biotic Index) than Cedar Street. In general, Cedar Street had higher pH, phosphorous, and Dissolved Oxygen. Water Street had a higher average temperature. From all of this, we have made the conclusion that Water Street is more polluted than Cedar Street. According to the Hilsenhoff Biotic Index, the Cedar street site numbers came out to 4.9, which indicates that the water quality is good and there is some organic pollution. At the Water Street site, the numbers came out 6.4, which indicates that the water quality is fair and the degree of organic pollution is fairly significant.
Recommended Citation
North Attleborough High School, North Attleborough, Massachusetts (2004). Ten Mile River Study. In Watershed Access Lab Projects. Project 16.
Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/wal_projects/16
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.