The Elk River Alliance (ERA) has been given $5,000 from RBC in Sparwood to monitor water quality in the Elk River.
The ERA is a project of Wildsight Elk Valley Branch and will use the money for their Lizard Creek Community-based Water Monitoring project. Lizard Creek is a relatively pristine tributary of the Elk River with limited development due to Mount Fernie Provincial Park and Island Lake Resort’s vast wilderness area.
“This is the perfect creek to get our feet wet monitoring water quality and stream health using the widely accepted streamkeepers and sensitive habitat inventory mapping (SHIM) methods,” said Lee-Anne Walker, ERA Executive Director.
“Twelve volunteer streamkeepers are trained to collect data on water temperature, suspended solids or turbidity, dissolved oxygen, pH, survey riparian stream bank habitat and during low flows, conduct freshwater bug inventories.
“By looking at these indicators of water health the project will gather important baseline information to compare other streams in the Elk River watershed.
“Ultimately, we hope to link our data to other water quality information collected on the Elk River by government agencies and Teck Coal.”
For more information about the Elk River Alliance see www.elkriveralliance.ca