Date
5-6-2005
Document Type
Presentation
School
Apponequet Regional High School, Lakeville, Massachusetts
Teacher
Norma McNally
Students
Liz Hanna, Jen Nash, Mollie Quelle, Lori Morgan, Becky Changery, Nick Allerdt
Description
Long Pond, due to changes in demographics over the past 20 years, is experiencing environmental stress from two sources. One is the documented presence of Eurasian Milfoil and the other is the increased population density with small lot size in areas immediately adjacent to the pond. It is believed that effluent from overtaxed septic systems is moving into the pond via subsurface flow. ARHS students completed a study of water quality in 2001. At that time they found fecal coliform counts of 215 colonies/100 ml at Clark Shores. The Lakeville Conservation Commission wanted to know whether conditions have improved. This year’s study attempted to replicate the study done in 2001 to assess this. Fecal coliforms were found once again, but in lesser quantities. Interestingly, counts decreased at Clark Shores but increased at other sites. Two possible reasons exist to explain this. One, residents are more aware of the problem and some have voluntarily updated their septic systems. Secondly, the rainfall in March of 2001 was above ten inches and in March of 2005 it was just above five inches. This points to the weather dependency of fecal coliforms. Other water quality parameters were within acceptable levels.
Recommended Citation
Apponequet Regional High School, Lakeville, Massachusetts (2005). Long Pond Replication Study. In Watershed Access Lab Projects. Project 30.
Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/wal_projects/30
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.