As some students walked heads-down to class Monday, Betty Wernette-Babian was dropping a small glass bottle down the side of the Farm Lane bridge.
The MSU sanitarian pulled the yellow line up, complete with a new sample of yellowish Red Cedar River water.
“It’s got a muddy appearance but that’s natural for this river,” she said.
Wernette-Babian takes samples weekly in three places on the MSU campus - Farm Lane, Hagadorn Road and Kalamazoo Street - which are then sent to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for E. coli testing.
The data from those tests are recorded and examined next to data from other sampling sites along the Red Cedar’s route from Williamston to the Grand River.
The Red Cedar testing program began in Williamston around 1996 because of concerns of E. coli with recreational users.
The campus sampling sites were added in 1999.
Despite the concerns, Wernette-Babian said she’s been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the water.
“I’ll ask (students) what they think about the river and they always say it’s dirty,” she said. “It is actually, in comparison to other rivers, pretty clean.”
Ingham County Environmental Health Director F. Robert Godbold said the short-term goal for the data is to just get an idea of trends in the E. coli concentrations and background concentrations.
Godbold said such an understanding is getting closer, which would let the department pursue more practical uses of the data.
Such uses would require a better understanding of how fast the river flows from Williamston to campus and what the effects of human influences are, Godbold said.
“That would help us determine why we have some high readings and when we can expect high readings,” he said. “If we measure high levels in Williamston, when can we expect high levels on campus?”
The department advises the MSU canoe delivery on when levels are high but would like to maintain similar advisories throughout the river.
Godbold said the department might try to start such a program this summer by posting sampling data on the DEQ Web site.
In the development of such an advisory system, the county has worked with various officials to determine what processes correspond with high E. coli levels.
One such official, MSU resource development Professor Scott Witter, has worked to tie E. coli concentrations with precipitation.
And now Witter is working on water usage issues, especially sewer inputs.
Both Witter and Godbold said the biggest way high levels can be avoided is the separation of sewer lines - a project on which both Lansing and East Lansing wastewater treatment plants are working.
“We’re working with communities to work with their constituents to make sure that separation is a goal,” Witter said. “The city of East Lansing has made great strides in that respect.”
