Finding Ulysses

What with school being unexpectedly closed today, there’s been a lot of rushing around in the Village of Trumansburg today, with parents trying to reschedule the day on the fly, and a lot of kids enjoying yet another unseasonably warm sunny day without any studying outside.

Tonight at 7:00 PM, there will be a public meeting at the elementary school auditorium about the bomb threats and the enhanced firecracker that was found. I won’t be there. I appreciate everything that the police and schools are doing to keep our kids safe, but there are some other serious and more ongoing threats to Trumansburg…

…such as the pollution of our creeks. Trumansburg and Taughannock Creeks define our community, but most of the time we turn our backs on them, and don’t even give a thought to what our presence adds to their waters.

At 7:00 PM tonight in the Trumansburg Fire Hall, Dr. Stephen Penningroth will be giving a presentation of what we know about the water quality of these creeks. The meeting is sponsored by Back to Democracy, which explains that Penningroth’s organization, Community Science Institute…

“…partners with local Stream Watch volunteers to monitor water quality in Taughannock Creek and Trumansburg (Frontenac) Creek, including effluent from the Village of Trumansburg’s aging sewage treatment plant. Preliminary data on samples collected from the headwaters to the mouths of both Trumansburg and Taughannock Creek suggest water quality impacts in some places, including E. coli bacteria and phosphorus and nitrogen nutrients. Stream Watch and CSI have requested funds from local municipal governments to increase the frequency of monitoring in both streams in order to get accurate baseline data and to characterize stormwater impacts on water quality throughout their lengths. Repeated sampling of the effluent from the sewage treatment plant over a two-year period from 2006 to 2008 has shown that the effluent is contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria above the permitted level approximately 90% of the time. However, because of dilution, the fecal bacteria counts at Camp Barton, located about a mile downstream at the mouth of Trumansburg Creek, are found to be elevated only under stormwater conditions.”