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Tompkins Cty
| 10/29/2008 12:34:00 PM Email this article • Print this article | |
What's In the Water?
Community Science Institute Hopes to Find Out
Jamie Saine
The Community Science Institute, based in Ithaca, has been traveling to local municipalities and requesting funding for area water testing. The institute has encountered open arms in some communities, but is running into some hard customers in others.
The institute was founded in 2000 as a non-profit organization and gained tax-exempt status in 2002. Steve Penningroth, executive director, said the institute works to monitor stream and storm water and educate the public.
"Our mission is to protect natural resources and to do it in partnership with citizen volunteers," he said.
The science institute has six major testing areas including Taughannock Creek, Trumansburg Creek, Six Mile Creek and Fall Creek, and tests suspended sediment, bacteria, phosphorus, nitrogen and salt and mineral levels. Samples are collected by community volunteers and delivered to the institute's Ithaca laboratory.
"It cuts down on costs to have volunteers collect the samples," Penningroth said. "Normally you pay more to collect the samples than to test them."
The Town of Newfield has worked with the institute before and renewed their agreement for 2009. Cindy Schulte, trustee, told the town board at its October 9 meeting that this year the town will be paying per test and according to what is tested instead of a blanket fee as in the past. She also said the money the town spends is reimbursable through a Department of Environmental Conservation grant.
Penningroth said the response to his request for funding varies greatly from town to town.
"It depends on the town, a lot of have responded quite well," he said. "Newfield has responded quite nicely."
The Village of Trumansburg has historically supported the institute's work and this year must decide whether to help fund testing again. Tompkins County has also responded positively to the institute's work.
"The county actually just voted approval in their tentative budget to allocate $2,300 for the next three years to set up monitoring in the Cayuga inlet," Penningroth said. "There's not a lot known about the inlet."
Penningroth recently approached the Town of Ulysses Board of Trustees requesting $4,996 in town funding to help support the institute's work in the Trumansburg area. The cost was calculated according to population and tax rate, he said.
There are six testing sites on Trumansburg Creek and Penningroth told the board he'd like to test each of the sites six times next year, three times to monitor base water flow and three for storm water flow.
The board did not take any action but Rod Ferrentino, trustee, asked Penningroth what the benefits for the town would be other than knowing about area water. Penningroth stressed the importance of monitoring natural resources and documenting trends for future work, though if levels are high little can be done to correct the problem. The board informed Penningroth that some of the Trumansburg testing sites are on National Forest land and advised him to take his cause to the parks.
Since volunteers collect field samples, money received from municipalities goes toward testing fees and data processing. The institute has its own lab that is certified by the New York State Department of Health, Environmental Laboratory Approval Program.
"The money goes to entering the data, managing the data, analyzing the data and putting it up on the Web site," Penningroth said.
The institute has collected and tested samples through 2008 but the most recent data available on its Web site is from 2006. The Web site is in the middle of a revamp and Penningroth said the institute does not want to spend the money uploading updated data when the site will change in the near future. He told the Town of Ulysses board that he hopes the new Web site, which includes interactive maps and data charts, will be more user-friendly for the public.
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The Youth Leadership Corps is a new Youth Council program to connect teens (14+) with their community through volunteer service while also doing workshops for leadership building and event/outreach planning. After two compelling opening productions, Glimmerglass Opera began its second weekend with an all-time favorite, Mozart's comic masterpiece "The Marriage of Figaro." Don't let the title fool you; with the libretto by genius collaborator Lorenzo da Ponte, this opera is presented in Italian with English projected titles. The show was a truly remarkable achievement-a seamless, clearly delineated, musically excellent, and emotionally telling performance-matched only by some unscheduled thunder and lightning theatrics outside.  |
