2014 Volunteer of the Year
Utah Water Watch is happy to announce the 2014 volunteer of the year:
Jim Hofmann
Jim lives in Springville, UT and has been a volunteer since March 2013. Jim joined Utah Water Watch because he wanted to know more about his local stream, Hobble Creek, which flows from the mountains through Springville on its way to Utah Lake. Jim enjoys being outdoors and brought his appreciation of lakes and streams from Washington when he moved to Utah in 1993. Since joining Utah Water Watch, Jim has completed 47 monitoring reports on Hobble Creek! "Jim was selected as our volunteer of the year not only for the large number of monitoring reports he submitted, but his incredible consistency" said Brian Greene, UWW program coordinator. This has led to a robust data set on Hobble Creek that provides an excellent baseline of the seasonal conditions.
In his first year Jim monitored Hobble Creek as it left the mountains (UWW SITE ID HOC-01-S). He was interested in exploring how the stream changed as it went through the town so in 2014 he added another site downstream of Springville (UWW Site ID HOC-02-S). "We were really impressed by Jim adding another site to monitor the urban impacts on water quality" Greene said. While many of the parameters did not vary greatly (see temperature graph below) between the two sites separated by 7 miles, Jim's data showed higher amounts of E.coli at the downstream location. This indicates that bacteria from waste is entering the downstream section. With this information scientists can begin further studies to locate the sources and identify possible solutions.
Jim says he enjoys getting out twice a month to monitor and hopes that the water quality data will benefit future research.