In the 2017 field season, PRWC’s volunteers and staff surveyed macroinvertebrates at stream locations throughout the watershed as part of a statewide effort to document high quality streams - three of the sites are new this year and preliminary results show they will be ranked high. The team also deployed data loggers to record summer stream temperatures in an effort to document cold water habitat as well as thermally stressed areas.
This year also marked the launch of the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) program working throughout the watershed. Over the course of six weeks, the 5-member YCC crew diligently cleared more than a half acre of land area of invasive plants using only hand pulling methods and removed approximately 175 forty-five gallon bags (or 40 cubic yards) of invasive plant material from eight different work sites. In the process, the team learned how to identify 70 species of plants (native and invasive). The crew installed 380 stormdrain markers along 40 roads in Woodbury and Southbury, and they assembled and painted one rain barrel. These activities were intended to help abate stormwater runoff and to improve riparian buffer habitat as well as stream water quality and to raise awareness among residents about where stormwater goes.
