Date
5-6-2005
Document Type
Presentation
School
Kuss Middle School, Fall River, Massachusetts
Teacher
Frank Farrell
Students
Kuss Middle School Environmental Club
Description
The 2005 Quequechan River Project has a couple of interesting subplots: The fecal coliform bacteria data, the increasing phosphorus levels, the leaf decomposition project, and the sewer overflow diversion project.
- We had no bacteria growth for the samples we collected this year. That could be a good thing resulting from the tunnel project diverting sewer overflow waters or it could just be because we had no rain before we sampled.
- Our biotic index indicated a severely impacted river (7.0). We collected mostly scuds from our site below the bridge. However, when we went with Olyssa Starry from the Urban Environmental Institute, we collected a much more diverse population living on decaying leaves in the Quequechan “Pond” area. Using her data I calculated an index of 5.7, which is in line with our past indices for the Quequechan.
- Every year for the past four years our concentrations of dissolved phosphorus has increased. Since phosphorus is often a limiting factor for plant growth, this could be a negative sign for the river. Perhaps more laundry detergent is being dumped into the river? We don’t know how to explain the increase.
Recommended Citation
Kuss Middle School, Fall River, Massachusetts (2005). Cleaning the Quequechan River. In Watershed Access Lab Projects. Project 26.
Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/wal_projects/26
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.