July 2019 Monitoring

Posted by: upperwalnutcreekaustin | July 13, 2019

July 2019 Monitoring

July 12 – another hot and humid day. It’s “only” in the mid to upper 90’s per the thermometer but thanks to the humidity, the heat index is well over 100. We’ve had a very wet summer so far (among other things, the lakes are completely full, which is unusual this time of year). So we haven’t hit 100 yet – very unusual for July, but so is all this rain and humidity.

With all the rain, the word for this summer is Green. All the plants – grasses, trees and more – are growing much more than usual in the summer.

Walking down to the stream we noticed a lot of trash in the creek that flows down that culvert next to the path. With nearly 2″ of rain in the last 2 weeks, guess that’s not surprising. Just sad. And the surface of the creek in the culvert is very scummy.

Also thanks to the recent rains, there is virtually no algae at all, either surface or submerged algae. There are a few clumps starting to grow here and there, but very few. I did see a school of gambusia (minnows) above the waterfall and inlet. The “Sometime Island” rocks in the middle of the stream above the inlet appear to be at least partly covered, I couldn’t get close enough with dry feet to confirm. And the water is flowing across the full length of the waterfall.

Downstream of the bridge, someone placed a few rocks in the the trail crossing but they’re not enough to prevent wet feet when crossing the stream.

Didn’t see any pigeons (pigeon poop is a possible e-coli source) or other birds… and for the first time ever there were NO e-coli colonies in the 3 ML samples on either the control or sample sites! Maybe the frequent rains washed them downstream? (But what about further upstream colonies flowing down to this site?)

Observations:

Air temp: 28 C
Water temp: 26 C
Dissolved oxygen 5.0
Specific conductance 450
pH 7.0
transparency (dissolved solids) 1.15 meters
nitrate < 0.3 mg