Local environmental organizations work together to protect the Wicomico River
SALISBURY, Md. – Environmental leaders in Wicomico County came together on Saturday to push for new solutions to improve the health of the local waterways.
“You want to know that you can play in the water, you can be around in the water,” said the President of the Wicomico Environmental Trust Bob Hocutt.
“The health of the river is also crucial to recreational fisherman,” said Hocutt.
That is why a team of experts from Salisbury University and members of the Wicomico Environmental Trust came out to the Wicomico River with their gear testing for things like phosphorus and nitrogen levels in the water.
“Phosphorus continues to be a problem,” said Christina Bradley, an assistant professor at Salisbury University.
According to Bradley, a high level of phosphorus often caused by chicken manure and lawn fertilizers attributes significantly to the damage of the Wicomico River and other local waterways.
“It’s also a very limiting nutrient, so as soon as there is phosphorus in the water that can trigger these large algal blooms, and we are still seeing very high loads of phosphorus into the waterways into the Wicomico River,” said Bradley.
Volunteers will conduct different tests by dipping glass containers into the water in order to test how much bacteria is inside.
“Students will actually take sub-samples of this water for chlorophyll, pH and salinity analysis,” said Bradley.
Results will then be presented to Wicomico County officials, which will in turn help to provide funding for more data analysis.
According to the assistant professor at the University, a recent upgrade to the Salisbury wastewater treatment plant is already causing some improvement in the water, which inspires these volunteers to keep going.
“It takes a little bit of time to see those effects and we’re finally starting to see it, which is a really good sign and tells us that what we’re doing is working and we need to continue doing those things following those guidelines and we’ll actually start to see our river health come back,” said Bradley.
