By
Shaun Bailey, Marketing and Communications Specialist, Partnership for the Delaware Estuary
Published on
November 14, 2007
(Click here to download the entire newsletter as a full-color PDF file)
Volunteering for nature-related programs can be a terrific way to “green” your lifestyle and help offset your ecological footprint. Every year, millions of volunteer hours are logged by environmental organizations around the country. These pastimes can be as rudimentary as stuffing trash bags with litter or as sophisticated as rehabilitating live animals. Somewhere in the middle of this spectrum is joining a volunteer “water-quality monitoring network,” an activity that is gaining in popularity.
A water-quality monitoring network is an interconnected group of people, many of which are volunteers, who test area waterways for signs of pollution. By alerting officials to water contamination in a timely matter, citizens can help to prevent or minimize damage to natural resources that would otherwise leave a much larger ecological footprint. Lucky for us, there are several organizations throughout the Delaware Estuary that welcome volunteer monitors.
Take, for example, the Pennsylvania Senior Environment Corps, whose 2,900 volunteers regularly monitor water quality at more than 1,000 sites throughout the commonwealth thanks to the leadership of the Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement. In just a decade’s time, more than 37,000 volunteer hours have been logged, saving approximately $8 million in costly services that could otherwise burden taxpayers. Add to this the number of other programs its membership manages and it’s no wonder the Pennsylvania Senior Environment Corps has been honored in the past by the United Nations Environment Programme, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and others.
Just across the Delaware River, the Watershed Watch Network of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection also relies on approximately 1,000 volunteers to gather water-quality data consisting of four different levels of scientific rigor. In fact, during their assessments, volunteers have turned up everything from “il legal dams to the dumping of trash and barrels of ‘toxic stuff,’” according to Danielle Donkersloot, volunteer monitoring coordinator for the NJDEP. These discoveries might never have come to light had it not been for the roughly 13,000 residents the program has trained since 2002.
In another part of the watershed, the Delaware Nature Society partners with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to offer Stream Watch, a program that involves volunteers in both stream monitoring and “adoption,” or remediation. During the first three quarters of 2007 alone, almost 200 citizens donated over 600 hours working at 116 sites throughout 17 watersheds. This “neighborhood watch” approach was recently credited with alerting Wilmington officials to a spill that occurred in White Clay Creek consisting of approximately eight million gallons of raw sewage.
For more information regarding these and other outdoor volunteer opportunities, please explore the Internet links below, or browse the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Directory of Volunteer Monitoring Programs, located online at http://yosemite.epa.gov/water/volmon.nsf.
Volunteer Programs in the Delaware Estuary:
- Delaware
- Delaware Nature Society
- www.delawarenaturesociety.org/streamwatch.html
- University of Delaware
- http://Citizen-Monitoring.UDel.edu
- New Jersey
- New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
- www.state.nj.us/dep/wms/bfbm/vm
- Salem County Watershed Task Force
- South Jersey Land Trust
- www.sjwatersheds.org/ongoing/streamassessments.htm
- Pennsylvania
- Crum-Ridley-Chester Volunteer Water Monitors
- www.Science.Widener.edu/~grant/crc/crc_main.html
- Darby Creek Valley Association
- Pennsylvania Senior Environment Corps
- Watershed-wide
- Delaware Riverkeeper Network
- www.DelawareRiverkeeper.org/Programs/Monitoring.asp
Volunteer Opportunity Search Engines:
- AmeriCorps
- Greater Philadelphia Environmental Network
- Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network
- United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania
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