Sam Fowler, Rita Grub, Billy Earle, Eric Reutebuch Bill Deutsch, Mona Dominguez, Sergio Ruiz-Córdova, & Mary Szoka
Message from the Director:
Thanks to an army of dedicated AWW citizen volunteers, 2014 turned out to be a very good year for AWW!
As most of you know, AWW merged with the AU Water Resources Center in mid-2013, and moved into our new home in the CASIC Building in the Auburn Research Park. This year has been a year of settling in and a year of transition, since AWW’s founder and long-time director, Bill Deutsch turned over his duties to me at the AWW Annual Meeting last June. I consider it an honor and a great challenge to follow in his footsteps!
This year’s 113 workshops conducted was one of the all-time highs, thanks in large part to our dedicated citizen trainers, and our super-workshop-coordinator, Miss Rita! With 470 new water watchers on the ground, we will get even closer to realizing our vision of having a monitor on every stream, river, lake, bay and bayou in the state.
And thanks to support from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System and the work of Miss Mona, more than 500 young Alabamians have learned about this state’s aquatic treasures and how to preserve and protect them.
Sergio, our resident database guru, has been putting in some long, late hours which will benefit us all in the coming years. Working closely with programmer-extraordinaire, Jim Johnson, who created the AWW online database back in the early 2000s, they will be rolling out an upgraded, faster, better AWW database in the coming months. For the first time, we will be able to visualize and query AWW data by watershed! This will be a huge step in citizen monitors, educators, resource managers, and the general public being able to interpret and utilize AWW water data much more easily – I am truly excited!
Lastly, AWW has some other exciting developments planned for 2015. We’ve been working with collaborators in other departments on campus, Dr. Roth at Micrology Labs, and with AWW monitoring groups on Little Lagoon, Lake Logan Martin and Lake Martin on a new toolbox for citizen monitors. Preliminary testing of this new tool, an Easygel ‘card’ that when inoculated with water, tests for Enterococcus, shows lots of promise – especially for our coastal monitors, since Enterococcus is the bacteria of choice for monitoring fecal contamination in marine waters. We’ll keep you posted!
I want to personally thank all of you for all that you do in support of the AWW Program, and preserving our treasured Alabama waters for all to enjoy! Have a joyous and blessed holiday season!
Eric Reutebuch, Director
2014 at a glance…
- 113 workshops (compared to 79 in 2013!)
- 7 New Citizen Trainers
- 470 Monitoring Certifications
- 3,225 Water Data Records Submitted
- 500+ Youth Educated
5 ways to do even more “water watching” in 2015…
- Sign up for a new workshop
- Invite a friend to become a water monitor
- Add a new strategic testing site
- Invite AWW to talk to your group about your watershed
- Volunteer to educate youth through with AWW
Don’t forget to read the latest AWWareness Blog Articles