Samantha, CUR- Phosfurious

Today I come bearing great news !  As of last weekend (April 22-24)  I now have a whole of 10 data points taken within Canal Street Canal drainage basin, at discharge point.  As I mentioned in my previous blog, Polluted Perception having 10 data points, 5 taken during an Ebb Tide and the other 5 taken during a Flood Tide provides me with sufficient evidence of possible excessive (anthropogenic) nutrient concentrations being released into the basin.  Most importantly, in my last blog I spoke about noticing for the first time some chemical agents drifting in the canal basin more closely towards discharge point.  Saturday morning, April 23 called for a Flood tide at 9:27am.  With this being said Dr. Woodall and I not only found, what we expected, lagoon water "flooding" into the culvert system, there was also clear, noticeable water flowing outside of the culvert system as well. With a total of  1.40in. of rainfall this did not surprise us.  This suggested all of the water we were seeing, flowing out of the culvert system during flood tide(carrying cigarette buds, chemical agents, sticks, leaves) must be all of that rainwater runoff accumulating from the untreated CSC culvert system.  However, there was more needed to be done to be comfortable with this conclusion.  Ergo, during this sampling time, not only did I measure salinity at sub surface  (0.2 ppt;parts per thousand a measurement in which salinity is measured,expressing concentrations of constituents within the water.) salinity was also measured at ~1ft of the water column(33.3 ppt), showing a significant difference in measurements within the water column (between 0-1ft).  This was huge ! I wanted more data to determine the difference in water quality at discharge as opposed to the water quality further East within the basin.  I took a sample ~100m East of the Canal (towards the IRL), within this area, salinity measured the same as below surface at discharge (33.3 ppt) which makes sense.  So, in order to achieve nutrient concentrations, a water sample was also taken at the East end of the basin. Below lies the results.....

Within every water sample taken within CSC at discharge point, Total Phosphate (TP) levels exceed

 Florida Department of Environmental Protection acceptable TP criterion (<0.049mg/L).

With this data I was able to determine that subsurface water salinity measurements were much lower than salinity measured (same point) at the surface (1ft).  Also, I have shown here in the above graph that not only did Total Phosphate levels exceed FDEP TP criterion taken within this canal at discharge point, the only time that TP concentrations did not exceed FDEP criterion was when the sample was taken at the East of the CSC basin, towards the IRL at flood tide (measuring 0.01 mg/L). On this same day, only ~100m West of the basin, TP levels reached 0.62 mg/L. Which, not only was significantly higher than the same day sample taken farther East, this data point measurement was of the highest TP concentration out of all 10 data points taken at discharge.  If that doesn't suggest this TP is ultimately anthropogenic and leaking to this body of water through the culvert system, than stay tuned, I am not giving up on this Canal yet and much more research will be coming! 

Bibliography:

• CoCoRaHS - Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network."CoCoRaHS - Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network. Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network., n.d. Web. 02 May 2016. <http://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/StateDailyPrecipReports.aspx?state=FL>.