Alabama is number one in the nation for diversity of freshwater mussels, fish, crayfish, snails and turtles, according to Scot Duncan. To maintain the Dixie State’s diversity lead in these species, Alabamians need to protect bodies of fresh water.
In June 2014, a report was released by the Environment America Research and Policy Center stating Alabama was fourth in the nation in pounds of toxic waste released into waters.
However, according to Eric Reutebuch, director of Alabama Water Watch and employee of the Auburn University Water Resources Center, many efforts have been put in place to ensure the water is clean.
“We work on clean water every day, 365 days a year here at Alabama Water Watch,” Reutebuch said.
Alabama Water Watch trains volunteers from the Tennessee Valley to Mobile and Gulf Shores to monitor the water daily, according to Reutebuch.
“We’ve got over 80,000 data records coming in from citizen monitors, who are not only monitoring the water, but also working with their local governments to find problems and solve problems,” Reutebuch said.
There have been many good results from finding problems with water chemistry, bacteria and E. coli in Alabama’s waters and then solving those problems, at least a dozen cases in Auburn-Opelika, according to Reutebuch.
Reutebuch said he lives on Lake Martin, the only Treasured Alabama Lake, and said it is considered one of the nation’s cleanest lakes.
Much of the infrastructure for waste water treatment was put underground for these bodies of water up to 70 years ago and old pipes can cause bacterial contamination and “that is just natural,” according to Reutebuch.
Reutebuch said their citizen monitors have a key role to play in protecting Alabama’s local waters.
In the 60s the Saugahatchee Creek which flows from Opelika and through the north side of Auburn used to be called Stink Creek, because before the Clean Water Act of 1972, cities dumped raw sewage into streams and rivers, according to Reutebuch.
The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law governing water pollution.
“So in the big picture, the water quality, our waters have improved fairly dramatically in the last 30, 40 years,” Reutebuch said.
In June 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency published a report stating Alabama had 283 impaired waters compared to Pennsylvania which has 6,957 impaired waters among other states with high impaired waters from pollution.
“It’s also a big responsibility, you know, to try to take care of it,” Reutebuch said. “We’re seeing a lot of good things happen even in the face of a lot of budget cuts at the federal and state level and a lot of concerned communities and citizens are stepping up to help monitor and protect their local waters.”
Jim Stoeckel, associate professor in the school of fisheries, aquaculture and aquatic sciences, primarily studies mussels and crayfish to determine the cause of specific threats to their extinction.
According to Stoeckel, there are more than 300 freshwater mussels species in the nation, Alabama home to approximately 180 species.
Stoeckel said more than 50 percent of these species are threatened.
Stoeckel explained that in the late 1800s mussels were harvested for pearl gathering when less than one in 10,000 mussels actually had a pearl inside.
He then said this depleted many local mussel beds, but since it did not destroy the habitat the mussels were able to repopulate and evolve in that area.
In the early 1900s a similar rush happened with buttons. Mussel shells were harvested and used to make buttons.
The next threat came with the Great Depression when dam construction heightened splitting up the habitat for the mussels. This had a long-term effect on the mussel population and caused several species to go extinct.
According to Stoeckel Alabama’s aquatic biodiversity is high because of the geologically stable landmasses, no glaciers to wipe out habitats and the vast number of rivers, streams and water basins.
In 2014, Stoeckel and his students conducted an experiment with the herbicide, Round-up, to see if herbicides were threatening the mussel population.
The experiment found good news in that pesticides and herbicides did not contribute to the extinction of mussels.
However, sedimentation has been proven to be a valid cause of extinction, according to Stoeckel.
Mussels are filter feeders and it becomes harder for them to find food when sediment from construction or storms clogs the water.
Stoeckel also said too much algae can cause the same problem of mussels not being able to find food.
Another experiment Stoeckel and his students performed was to find if reproductive failure was contributing to extinction.
Male mussels release their gametes into the water, and females then find them.
Sediment could make finding the gametes harder for the females.
According to Stoeckel it was found that reproduction failed 100 percent when there was more than 20 miligrams of sediment per liter of water.
“So that’s a problem,” Stoeckel said. “It doesn’t have to be clay or non-food particles. It can also be if you have an algabloom
Stoeckel and his students set up a pond with an air blower to create a current. They set male mussels at the start of the man-made stream and dispersed female mussels approximately 25 meters apart.
The study found that reproduction did not fail in those given increments.
However dam construction does split up the gametes permanently which causes a reserve of mussels to become extinct if they cannot reproduce and evolve, according to Stoeckel.
“So a previous study that came out years ago scared a lot of people because it said that once you got below 10 mussels per meter square they had almost complete reproductive failure,” Stoeckel said. “And I can tell you that around here, it’s hard to find populations that are at 10 per meters square or above.”
Stoeckel has studied mussels quite a bit, however he said crayfish study is approximately 10 years behind mussel research.
Stoeckel said as of 2013 only 12 percent of over 300 crayfish species have been researched to determine the species’ life histories.
The Clean Water Act has helped keep Alabama waters a good habitat for the aquatic biodiversity thriving, according to Stoeckel.
“They’re [the mussel and crayfish populations] probably declining at a slower rate than they would have if that had not been passed,” Stoeckel said. “It’d be a total disaster if we hadn’t had that. It bought us time.”
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