You all have heard of “Adopt-A-Highway” to clean up
trash along roadsides to keep your community beautiful? BTW… Aiken Homes Team has adopted a highway,
maybe this might be our next project?
This is kind of same idea but we become stewards of our
beautiful waterways instead. South Carolina has so many
waterways, from freshwater streams to saltwater marshes. If you are interested
in protecting the health of our water and love to be outdoors, you are in the
right place!
South Carolina Adopt-A-Stream (SC AAS) provides the opportunity for those
interested in the protection and improved management of South Carolina
waterways to be directly involved in their monitoring and reporting. Volunteers
provide vital data for streams that complements local and state data used to
determine the health of our waterways.
To be involved you need to take a training course:
There are three training options:
- Freshwater stream habitat
assessment with freshwater monitoring (test shallow streams).
·
Freshwater
stream habitat assessment and macroinvertebrate surveys (find water bugs).
- Coastal habitat assessment and
tidal saltwater monitoring (monitor where the tides change).
Aaaaand
coming Fall 2023: Lake monitoring for lakes larger than 5 acres.
I bet you are wondering how often you would have to
monitor?
- Assess your stream habitat once a
year to see if anything changes, such as bank stability, vegetation, or
buffer zones.
- Freshwater stream monitoring is
done monthly, measuring air temperature, water temperature, pH,
dissolved oxygen, transparency, and bacteria. Bacteria monitoring looks
specifically at E. coli levels in water.
- Macroinvertebrate surveys are
done twice per year. These surveys record the diversity and
abundance of aquatic insects found in the water.
- Tidal Saltwater Monitoring is
done monthly, measuring air temperature, water temperature,
salinity, dissolved oxygen, and transparency. You can also join a sister
program called NOAA’s Phytoplankton Monitoring
Network to sample for harmful algal
blooms bi-weekly.
Ready to get started?
The first step is to become a certified SC Adopt-A-Stream aka AAS
volunteer by attending a FREE workshop! Volunteer trainings are available
across the state of South Carolina. Follow this link for training events: https://scdhec.gov/environment/your-water-coast/adopt-stream-program
We
challenge our community, organizations and businesses to work together to keep
Aiken County and South Carolina beautiful. It’s not only about the trash on our
roadsides we can see BUT making sure our waterways are in good health too!
A
special thank you to Lauren Alston with Aiken County Engineering Department-
Stormwater Division for taking the time to teach us about this wonderful
program!
Brandi Cook
+ Vikki Crossland
803.645.3325
| info@aikenhomes.com
Meybohm
Real Estate
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