"I have always felt that water quality monitoring and data assessment is important regardless of who's doing it. We value having monitors out on water bodies that we either do not monitor or monitor very infrequently.
The observations that you make as a class in your monitoring efforts are invaluable.
"
Stephen Twidwell
Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC)
Executive Summary:
Stephen Twidwell joined Cyberways and Waterways to share his work with Texas
waterways. He was instrumental in developing Texas' water quality standards
and has continued to spearhead important initiatives including the study and
classification of polluted waters and the accumulation of mercury in fish.
Healthy and Unhealthy Waterways
- It's very important to have both clean AND balanced waterways,
because a nice balanced system is one that can handle natural pollutants
and deal with them in a good way. The problems develop in waterways where an unbalanced situation develops.
- Sometimes toxic materials in water can affect other organisms that are not in the water. For example, low levels of mercury in the water can bioaccumulate (increase in concentrations) as they move
up the food chain. That's why sometimes larger fish that are long lived accumulate high concentrations of mercury.
- In some respects, specifying the correct balance (in a waterway) is a little bit difficult because there are so many things, but in terms of priorities, what we look for is dissolved oxygen; for
example, it should not be too high or too low, but in a range that is tolerant to a wide range of aquatic organisms.
- I think most monitoring agencies have well-defined procedures and protocols for taking samples and making measurements. The biggest problems we see is the problem of monitoring agencies for adhering strictly to those procedures. It's very good to maintain documentation of how samples
are collected and measurements are made so there can be no doubt about the quality of those samples and measurements.
-
The water should be generally clear, so it doesn't seem cloudy or turbid or have an unusual color to it. There should not be an inordinate number of aquatic plants.
Those are really the two general things that we look for as an outward sign of good water quality.
Texas Waterways
- We (Texans) have very good quality of water in the Gulf of Mexico, at least along the Texas shoreline. There is only one existing problem there - a consumption advisory for mercury in king mackerel.
Of all streams and rivers in Texas, we have more than 150 water bodies with varying degrees of problems.
- I would say that it varies by water body type; a little each year, and it is difficult to generalize across
all those groups. There are other variables that come into play here also. For example, here in Texas we have a
very large number of streams that do not flow year round. In Texas there are also many small reservoirs which were
constructed for purposes other than recreation or public supplies. But in general terms, we sample or assess about
sixty percent of all water body types and as much as ninety percent of the larger reservoirs in the state. In terms of impairment, of those that we sampled
roughly one-third show some form of impairment.
-
The TNRCC (Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission) is a very big agency that has responsibilities for regulating air and water quality across the state.
We accomplish this primarily by monitoring both the air and water, assessing the data, and writing permits that
control the amount of waste materials that can be discharged
into the air or water, then the cycle starts all over again. That is a simplified picture of what we do.
- Texas Resevoir Rankings--In terms of clarity. The top five resevoirs would be Lake Travis, Canyon Lake, Armistad Reservoir on the Rio Grande, Choke Canyon, and Stillhouse Hollow.
The bottom five resevoirs would be Rita Blanca Lake, Cox Lake, Lake Kickapoo, Old Marlin City Lake, and Lake Texana.
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