Streamkeeper Report - January 2024

By Jim Sauter

“We are salting the Earth where it shouldn’t be salted,”
- Bill Hintz, a professor at the University of Toledo

Salt Watch
Welcome to the New Year! As we begin the new year, I am challenging our members to think more about how we use salt in our communities. If you accept the challenge, please take the "Salt Watch" quiz from the Izaak Walton League. Better yet, order a free kit, take some samples, and enter this information into the national database. The instructions for entering the data are simple and straightforward. You can learn more about the program here.

In fact, our first official entry from our TCTU chapter that I am aware of was made on July 2, 2023, at the South Branch of the Vermillion River. THANK YOU to Rowe Winecoff for his effort! Here are his results:

Name of observer: Rowe Winecoff
Date: 7/2/2023
Salt reading: 25.00 ppm (parts per million). A good low reading...
Comments: I'm a stream keeper for the South Branch of the Vermillion River in Minnesota. We monitor the river each week from April to October and I am responsible for the 1st week of each month. I added the Salt Watch this year to my monitoring. This is the 1st month I’ve been able to include the photo of my salt monitoring.