Photo By Tina WrightStephen Penningroth of the Community Science Institute trained volunteer water monitors last summer in Buttermilk Creek.

Southern Cayuga County flattens out with fertile fields and thousands of dairy cattle in the lake plain from Lansing north to Auburn. Large dairy farms, often referred to as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), dominate the landscape that drains into Cayuga Lake. Last spring, volunteers in the King Ferry area started a water-monitoring group called Direct Streams after seeing small streams running brown from cow manure following heavy rains.

Not surprisingly, water quality data from the first year reveal high levels of phosphorus, nitrogen and e-coli in streams that drain this farmland.

Maria Bachich says she initially approached the Community Science Institute in Lansing about forming a water-monitoring group to cover the area north of Lansing’s Salmon Creek. “We wouldn’t be monitoring a big stream, we would be monitoring selective little streams that run from the top of the hill. They are like pipes into the lake. And that’s how we got started,” she says.

Bachich has lived in King Ferry for 40 years. Her personal pipe to Cayuga Lake is Mill Stream, which runs behind her house. “It’s just the sweetest little creek. My son became ill and I left the area. I was gone for nine years. When I returned, the creek had changed,” she says. “I can’t explain it. It was just sick, didn’t look the same.”

When raw manure ran down Mill Stream one day a few years ago, she called the DEC and showed the official the creek and the manuresoaked field upstream with obvious run-off. Children were playing in the lake just downstream. The DEC officials said there was nothing the agency could do.

In response, the Direct Streams group was formed and now has nine active monitors and two backup people who sample 14 sites on streams in the area. Paines Creek flows into Cayuga Lake just north of Aurora. Going south, streams sampled are Deans Creek, Mill Stream, a stream between Genoa and Lansing called Townline Creek and Lake Ridge Creek near the AES power station.

All sampling data from the many watersheds of the southern Cayuga Lake basin can be found on the Community Science Institute Web site (www.communityscience.org).

What does the Direct Streams’ data tell us after a year of monitoring in the land of large dairies? “It has shown that even at base flow, the streams are loaded with phosphates and nitrates and nitrites,” Bachich says. “During the second base flow [sampling] in June, the water was clear. But it had rained three days before and the e-coli was very, very high. Phosphorus was very high, nitrogen was very high, chlorides were high.”

And when the King Ferry crew sampled water in storm-flow conditions on Oct. 29, e-coli numbers were off the charts. Water safe for swimming should not have more than 235 colonies of e-coli according to Bachich. Web site data for water quality on local streams that day list e-coli readings as high as 19,000 and 22,000 colonies.

Dairy farm issues can be inflammatory in her neighborhood, but Bachich is optimistic that solutions can be found. “We put a man on the moon! We should be able to solve this. There has to be a solution. We just have to get the scientific data and then figure out what needs to be done,” she says. “Agriculture is our business in Cayuga County. You can’t put farmers out of business. I think we’re going to need some kind of help, maybe from the government, to find a solution so the farmers can farm and the watershed’s protected.”

CSI director Stephen Penningroth says the Direct Stream data is essential, because knowledge is power. Without ongoing water monitoring, he says, it’s hard to know or prove when water is degraded. Water quality data educates the general public as well as local and state government.

The Direct Streams group and the Community Science Institute’s certified laboratory are struggling to find funds for next year’s sampling events in southern Cayuga County. They lack the county and local government funding that helps support water-monitoring in Tompkins County. “It’s kind of touch-and-go right now but I think it’s very, very important to do this,” Bachich says.

Cayuga County has more waterfront than any other county in the state other than along Long Island’s Atlantic shore. “My concern is our wonderful watershed. So often in many communities, nothing is done until it’s destroyed. And then they have to do these heroic efforts to bring things back the way they should be. I can’t imagine that there aren’t solutions to protecting this watershed,” Bachich says.

TAGGED WITH: Cayuga Lake Watershed, farming, water quality