My waterways

by Lucy Kemnitzer

The Woodrow Street Outfall is my culvert. Two years in a row I "did" First Flush there, and ever since I have felt a special connection to this little creek in a ditch. I stop off to visit it every so often when I take my dog to Its Beach, and I take note of what's growing there, and I take it a little personally when I find trash in it! When I'm talking with friends and acquaintances about the issues of the day, my little culvert comes to mind. It personalizes Water for me. This last summer I "did" Urban Watch on Soquel Creek in the heart of Capitola Village. I took my camera, and I documented for my own satisfaction the changes in the waterway and the signs of human and natural life on it's banks. One of my favorite places to go was at Capitola Center -- our last stop of each trip -- even though it was almost always dry, because of the magnificent hive that bees had built on the base of a bird house high in a tree overlooking our culvert.

From Anthony Petrillo:
I am a volunteer with Urban Watch in the city of Capitola. I monitor Soquel Creek with Tamara Myers. Once a month, on Saturday and Sunday mornings,  I meet Tamara and two other students and we visit six sites to take water samples and observations. Then we go back to the park and sit at a picnic table and analyze the water samples with a chemistry kit.  This is the best part. We look for things like detergents, copper and ammonia-nitrogen and turbidity. I really like this work because Tamara is a great teacher and I learn a lot about the environment, the plants and restoration of the fish habitat. 
I am a 16-year-old AFE homeschooler and I live on the edge of the Soquel Demonstration Forest.  I like to hike and ride horseback here.  I plan on becoming a journalist and one of my goals is to convince my readers that the environment is not something you should take for granted.  I want people to live in a way that doesn’t hurt nature.  Working with Urban Watch is helping me become a better environmental writer and its a lot of fun.

From Colleen Sutter:

I first discovered the excitement of volunteering for the Coastal Watershed Council last winter in 2005 as an intern from UC Santa Cruz. I had the pleasure of working with CWC program coordinator, Debie Chirco-Macdonald as a volunteer to conduct water monitoring on marshland of the Agricultural Land Based training Association (ALBA) Triple M Ranch in Watsonville. Carneros Creek, which runs through this marsh, provides one of the main sources of freshwater to Elkhorn Slough. The goal of the project was to help ALBA determine how big of an impact the surrounding agriculture has on water quality in the area, and how well the marsh is acting as a natural filter and buffer for that type of pollution.

Debie and I took monthly trips to the marshland from December through June to conduct tests at six predetermined water-monitoring sites. Debie, along with CWC Program Director, Tamara Doan, were clearly thrilled to have my help. As they instructed me on how to use all the equipment, they gave me support, confidence and kindness.

Our work blended in with playtime as each month we returned to our spot to dress up in funny outfits. Our bright orange vests had pockets bulging with clipboards, instruments, bottles, pens, and flagging- which we wore with either waterproof chest-waders (when it was waist deep with mucky water), or knee-high rubber boots (as the rainy season passed). Laughing at our stylish appearance, Debie and I would cautiously enter the deepest part of the marsh first. We each experienced the joy of slipping on the mucky-goo beneath our boots, getting tangled in smart-weed vines, and stepping down to find the water too deep to stand in.

We also experienced other excitement from being in such an unconventional work place. Debie and I would be wide-eyed with amazement at how much the marsh changed each time we returned. We followed the phenology of the marsh from its completely brown, dead and dry stage- through its wettest floods- to its lush green season. We watched tadpoles become tree-frogs that hopped from the leaves to our hands and back. We saw different beautiful bugs proliferate with the passing months. We witnessed the cat tails grow well above our heads. Our trips to the marsh were clearly the most enjoyable parts of my months.

My experience as a volunteer with the Coastal Watershed Council has opened my eyes to the exhilaration of working with other compassionate people in my community. It has given me an opportunity to understand the environmental challenges facing our freshwater bodies, and the tools and technical skills necessary to work to improve water quality. But perhaps more importantly, volunteering for CWC has given me what other naturalists have written about for hundreds of years- a passion to work outside and to be part of a collective effort to preserve, understand and enjoy our quickly disappearing habitats near home.