Samantha, CUR - We've been fenced off

Hello there ! Saturday, March 12, I received a message from Dr. Woodall saying, "We've been fenced off." As you can see from the picture below, Canal Street Canal, the site I have been monitoring, has in fact been "fenced off."

Picture taken by Dr. Woodall
March 12, 2016

 With this information I started to become curious as to what the reason the "fencing off" of the Canal Street Canal was for.  Wednesday, March 16, I was driving by when I spotted some men working within the grass area between Riverside Drive and the Canal. They seemed to be digging in that area several meters west of the canal.  Eager to know why this area was being fenced off I got out of my car, walked over to the working men and asked them what work they were doing (which looked to me as some sort of work within the piping underground) as well as if their work was effecting the culvert system directly below discharging into the Canal.  "We are updating  4x4 piping which is feeding the Brannon Center, a project that was completed in 1993.  This has nothing to do with the culvert system below," he replied.

Picture of the beginning of the canal, discharge point shown
in the lower right hand side, while piles of sediment are shown
(top left) that have been stirred up due to construction 

The Brannon center, is a community building located southeast of the canal (which according to google maps is 148 feet {45.1m} within distance of each other) and is currently being remodeled. Today I decided to take a look around the canal, specifically the fenced off area.  Using iMeasurer 6.3 part of Markelsoft, Inc (an application on my iPhone which measures walking distance between two locations using the GPS on my device), I was able to measure the length and width of the fenced off area as well as how much is fenced off of the Canal.  The Canal is ~ 128.75x9.00m, the "fenced" off covering 14.8m(East to West) in length of the Canal and the whole width of the canal (South to North) and goes on even further, with the "fence" being 46.30m in length.  When walking around the Canal today I noted that it was a pretty hot day, with 95% cloud coverage and noting a light rain for the first two minutes of being outside, next to the Canal.  According to Underground Weather (New Smyrna Beach{NSB}) there is an 80% chance of rain within the NSB area with a total of 31in precipitation within the next 24 hours.

The construction going on at the Brannon Center
on a slant downward with a storm drain at the bottom of the slant.
This storm drain is most likely within the Watershed discharging into the Canal Street Canal.

 With this being said, I have some concerns that although the project under construction is not effecting the culvert system specifically, the digging in the area (especially being so close) is stirring up the soil in the area, most likely releasing nutrients, which eventually may make it's way into the canal due to "runoff" caused from the expected rain.

To the right, start of one of the ditches dug within the
Canal area noting the flowers to the left
which are possibly grown with fertilizer
containing Nitrogen and Phosphate

 Although there is still a lot more work that would have to be done in order to determine the effects this construction may have on the water quality of this canal, I would like to measure the water quality possibly during this "fenced off" and compare it to my previous data(taken when no construction was disturbing the land within the canal area to see if there is a correlation between the two.

Works Cited 

• Markelsoft.com. (2008-2015). iMeasurer. Retrieved from https://launchkit.io/websites/wQBt16jsVbo/
• Weather Station ID: KFLNEWSM13 Station Name: Venetian Bay-Savona North. (2016). Forecast for New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Retrieved from https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KFLNEWSM13#history