January 21, 2015: Six River Watchers practiced data management by submitting water quality information to the LCRA’s CRWN website. River Watchers monitor water quality at 25 sites in the Austin area, document the findings, and then enter the data online so that the information is available to the public. The data collected includes, sample depth, air/water temperature, dissolved oxygen average, specific conductance, pH, nitrate nitrogen, and field observations. You can find their water quality data here. After entering the data, they followed the link from our website to the data for the site they just entered. Once on the data page, River Watchers noticed what was included in that format vs. what data we include on our datasheets. Then they hit the graph data button for their sites and looked for long-term trends. There was a noticeable trend in the data on Lady Bird Lake at West Bouldin Creek where the conductivity has risen above the level set as its standard. In a recent meeting at LCRA, one of our Program staff heard from TCEQ that Lady Bird Lake could get listed on the 303(d) list of impaired waterways because of its excessive conductivity. The River Watchers data show the same trend as the professional data. Most of the River Watchers looked at datasets that went back for about 10 years, but some looked at datasets that went back more than 20 years!
