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<\/a>Clara (far right) on her 85th Birthday, with Mona Dominguez, Rachel McGuire, and SOS member Carolyn Carr.<\/p><\/div>\n
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Clara is a retired school teacher from Auburn City Schools and has nearly 40 years of experience teaching math and sciences. She shared her experience with teaching in her book, From the Trenches: Practical Experience in Secondary Education<\/em>, published in 2014. Clara’s author biography mentions that she has won Auburn City School’s Teacher of the Year Award, the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching, and the Delta Kappa Gamma Excellence in Teaching Award. It’s safe to say that Clara is very accomplished, not only in her teaching career but in her environmental stewardship and advocacy.<\/p>\n Clara shares her monitoring success stories with a group of students.<\/p><\/div>\n Clara was first certified as an AWW Volunteer Monitor in 2006. Since then, she has collected nearly 400 bacteria data records. During her monitoring career, Clara has monitored 27 sites for bacteria spanning across the Moores Mill Creek, Parkerson Mill Creek, Pepperell Branch, Saugahatchee Creek, Silver Creek, Chewacla Creek, and Town Creek watersheds. This is how she earned the title “Bacteria Lady!”<\/p>\n Clara (far right) participates in a stream clean up.<\/p><\/div>\n Click here to view a video of Clara telling her bacteriological monitoring success stories!<\/a><\/p>\n In September 2007, Clara, as part of Save Our Saugahatchee’s (SOS) monitoring efforts, was featured in the American Water Resources Association’s bi-monthly news magazine,\u00a0Water Resources Impact<\/em>, in an article written by Dr. Bill Deutsch.<\/p>\n You can read the full Impact<\/em>\u00a0article here.<\/a><\/p>\n Bill recalls Clara’s monitoring efforts in the article: ” A retired school teacher began [bacteriological] monitoring at multiple sites, particularly city parks that had streams flowing through them. She measured high levels of E. coli at a city park in Auburn, Alabama, that is a popular playground area for local children. Investigations in the upstream watershed revealed an underground sewer leak oozing from a suburban roadside slope, flowing into the stream that drained to the city park. Bacteria testing verified that this water was indeed highly contaminated. Armed with the E. coli data, the citizen monitor contacted local city authorities, who were pleased with the citizen monitor effort in detecting and sourcing the contamination. The city promptly fixed the sewer leak, which resolved the bacteria contamination in the city park downstream.”<\/p>\n This graph shows high counts for E. coli from Clara’s data from Felton Little Park in Auburn from 2006-2008<\/p><\/div>\n Clara has been monitoring the Chewacla Swim Beach every summer since 2006 and has caught several bacterial issues with the site. In summer 2017, the beach had to close because of bacterial contamination that Clara caught with her testing!<\/p>\n Clara caught bacterial contamination at the Chewacla Swim Beach in July 2017. Nearly 2000 E. coli per 100 mL detected! Gross!<\/p><\/div>\n Former AWW Director Eric Reutebuch reflects on moments with Clara, recalling that she modified her toaster oven to make a hi-tech bacteriological incubator and often purchased her own bacteriological monitoring supplies to save SOS funds for other monitors.<\/p>\n Clara was featured in Eric’s\u00a0 AWWareness blog post about AWW’s 25th year:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>