Posted: August 17, 2022
A summer of water quality monitoring
Our awesome Water Quality Assistant Olivia MacAskill reflects on her personal experiences after spending her summer sampling and testing the water quality at watershed beaches.
Written by Olivia MacAskill, Water Quality Assistant at Ottawa Riverkeeper
As daylight hours begin disappearing and morning temperatures slowly fall, we can take it as a sign that summer in the watershed is heading to a close. As we near the end of August and the start of September, what better time than now to reflect on my experience as the water quality assistant during this incredible summer that is seemingly wrapping up before my eyes.
It seems like just the other day that I was knee deep studying for midterms when I stumbled across this position with Ottawa Riverkeeper, admittedly during one of my study breaks. This discovery quickly sent me down a rabbit hole of sorts, where I began endlessly exploring the Ottawa Riverkeeper website and past projects. It quickly became apparent to me that this was where and how I wanted to spend my summer. Fast forward a few months and there I was, strapping on the hipwaders, whirl packs in hand, heading out to collect samples across the watershed.
Despite calling the Ottawa area home for my whole life, I had rarely spent the summer season in the nation’s capital, until this year. For as long as I can remember, my summer memories stem from the lakeside in the Lanaudière region, where I attended and later worked at an overnight summer camp. This summer served as the perfect way to bridge my passion for working outside, my eagerness to explore the watershed in the summer, and my academic background in biology and environmental science.
Throughout the summer, I thoroughly enjoyed discovering new beaches and taking in some breathtaking sights and scenes along the way. Thanks to this summer, I discovered a new-found love for Arnprior, Ontario, as it is home to Robert Simpson Park. This had to be one of my favourite beaches I visited this season. It offers up an absolutely spectacular view as you slowly drive down to the parking lot. It also features a lovely sand-covered beach surrounded by a green space and a gravel walking path along the water. Come the end of the summer, I am confident that I now know the locations of all the hidden underwater rocks at this beach. It only took about a month of tripping over these boulders to master this skill, in hip waders no less.
I also had the opportunity to meet some friendly people along my weekly journey. Whether it be conversations with beach goers, lifeguards, canteen operators, boaters or just people passing by, I always enjoyed your curiosity about what on earth I was doing or how you could view the results. These new found friends also taught me so much about the sites I was sampling at. Whether it be about water level trends at that beach, how wind works on the river, or about the history of the area, I found myself learning something new almost every week.
Lastly, this summer provided me with the chance to work closely with a super handy online resource called Swim Guide. Swim Guide is where we would post all of our own water quality results as well as water quality results processed by other municipalities. I was very impressed to learn that Swim Guide reported water quality results from well beyond our watershed, in fact I could even use it to check the water quality at beaches in Costa Rica! I was always amazed by how informative yet easy to navigate this resource was. Available as a website and app, with great photos, descriptions and of course water quality information, Swim Guide is definitely a resource I will continue to use anytime I’m heading to the beach.
All in all I had the most amazing time conducting water quality monitoring with Ottawa Riverkeeper this summer. This opportunity provided me with the chance to work with an incredible team, further explore new areas of the watershed, build connections in new communities and learn from locals along the way. Although I certainly deepened my relationship with the Ottawa River and its tributaries this summer, I also quickly learned that I still have some serious exploring work to do, as the watershed itself is twice the size of New Brunswick (that’s my favourite watershed fact by the way!).
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