This summer people sitting on the banks of the Red Cedar River could have witnessed the fish population electrically shocked and the waters run green with MSU pride.
These are all part of MSU-WATER, or Watershed Action Through Education and Research, an ongoing $1.4 million project aiming to clean up the Red Cedar in four years.
The initiative is in its second year, but is far from over.
Ruth Kline-Robach, water quality coordinator at the Institute of Water Research, said MSU-WATER will hopefully continue to work on the project even after the allotted four-years is up.
“We are really pleased with the progress we’ve made so far,” she said. “We’re working on a large educational initiative where we’ve got a whole group of students, faculty and neighboring organizations get together to talk about the different outreach and enrichment ideas, and talk about the river.”
Since students left for the summer research has been in full-swing on the watershed.
In late May, a group of faculty, staff, and students from various departments on campus dyed a portion of the river green to test how contamination travels through the river.
“As long as you understand the physics of the river, you can predict how a given pollutant will behave when it enters the river,” said Tom Voice, a civil and environmental engineering professor. “The mathematical model will allow us to ask ‘What if?’ question, which will help us to do a better job of prediction.”
The dye was dropped from the bridge on Hagadorn and then monitored as it moved with the currents down the river, as a simulation how pollution would travel.
This was the first time the group has tested the river by dying it, but they hope to do more in the future when the river is flowing at different velocities.
Not only does the participants of the initiative hope to test the water, but they hope to test what lives in the water, as well.
“MSU wants to do what they can to help the river and reduce the university’s impact on the river,” said fisheries and wildlife graduate student Jo Latimore. “And before we can know what we’re doing, we have to know what the state of river is now.”
Latimore, who headed the project, waded through the Red Cedar River late June with three undergraduate students to determine the type of fish living there.
“We just want to know what lives here, because we don’t even really know that,” she said.
The group used a electric generator to send electric pulses of electricity through the water to temporarily stun fish.
“We’re able to net them up real quick and by the time we get them in our cooler, they’re swimming around again,” Latimore said.
Latimore said this project will help dispel beliefs about what lives in the river.
The two years of the MSU-WATER has been testing and monitoring the river, will help in the long run, said James Clift, policy director for the Michigan Environmental Council.
“Clearly the better job we do at monitoring what’s in the water, the better job we’re gong to do at keeping our rivers clean,” he said.
