Hello TRWA Sampling Volunteers and Potential New Volunteers,
I hope this email finds you and your families well. Happy 2021! I’m hopeful better times are coming soon.
As you know we cancelled the 2020 sampling program to keep our volunteers and the personnel at the treatment plant safe. In 2021 we are hoping there will be enough folks vaccinated to do a last Saturday morning of some summer month refresher training session at Sweets Knoll and sample though the later part of the sampling season. We will contact you as we see how the vaccination program progresses.
We really want to get the program back to normal (April to October sampling) for 2022. Thanks to your great work, we were fortunate going into 2020 having four prior years with very complete data from two dry years (2016 and 2017) and two wet years (2018 and 2019). This gives us a pretty good idea that 2020 a hot and dry year was probably much like 2016 and 2017 even though we couldn’t sample. In 2022 it will be a new story because three large up-river treatment plants Brockton, Bridgewater and Taunton will start to remove nitrogen so we want to have monitoring to start to evaluate the water quality impact of this important change.
We miss seeing you all and appreciate the contribution you make to promote water quality improvement of the Taunton River. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. Also, we always have to add a few samplers each year to expand teams that have lost members because folks have moved away or for other reasons. When we do restart the program, please consider reaching out to others who may be interested in joining us.
Stay safe!
Best,
Steve