Snapshot Water Monitoring Day 2025: Here’s How it Went…
Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Community, Conservation, and Citizen Science
On September 18th, 70 citizen scientists came together, rolled up their sleeves (and pants), pulled on their muck boots, trudged through mud, and waded in streams. During Snapshot Day, volunteers gained hands-on experience in assessing water quality and learned about the tools and techniques used to measure it.
What is Snapshot Day?
Snapshot Water Monitoring Day is an annual event organized by The Watershed Foundation and powered by you- citizen scientists in our community!
TWF strategically selects sampling sites throughout the Upper Tippecanoe Watershed to ensure accurate representation (a snapshot) of water quality across the whole region! All sampling takes place in a 4-hour window, so when the data comes in, our team can confidently analyze it and work to pinpoint potential pollution sources.
The accurate, real-time snapshot that we collect not only helps us identify sources of pollution but also guides long-term efforts to protect and improve water quality.
For example, high E. coli data from previous years led to the installation of dog waste stations along Cherry Creek in Winona Lake—helping to reduce bacteria entering Winona Lake.
What did we find?
Similar to last year’s event, we faced challenges due to drought conditions that left many waterways with low or no water flow. Volunteers assessed 92 total sites, though only 84 were sampled. Seven locations were dry, and one was deemed too steep to access safely.
Each site was tested for important water quality indicators:
- Temperature
- Turbidity (cloudiness)
- pH
- Nitrate/Nitrite
- Ortho-phosphate
- Dissolved oxygen
- E. coli
E. coli results were the first to be analyzed, and here’s what we found:
- Out of the 79 site samples tested for E. coli, 42 sites (53%) showed no E. coli present.
- The average E. coli level was 231 cfu/100mL.
- The highest recorded level was 7,250 cfu/100mL.
What is a CFU? A colony-forming unit is a group of “live” bacteria or fungi growing together- in this case, E. coli bacteria.
How does TWF count CFUs?
We plate diluted water samples on nutrient-rich media, incubate them, and count the resulting colonies to calculate approximate bacterial levels.
How much E. coli is allowed in recreational waters?
The safety threshold set by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management is 235 cfu/100mL for a single sample.
What’s Next?
Using this E coli data, our watershed conservationists investigate areas where high levels were detected. This helps us pinpoint the sources of contamination and develop effective solutions to protect water quality!
The rest of the data is still being analyzed, and we’ll be releasing a full results map soon. Stay tuned to see how your local streams and lakes measured up—and learn how this data helps shape our watershed’s future.
Thank You to Our Volunteers!
None of this would be possible without our passionate, gritty, and ever-curious citizen scientists. Your work is making a real difference in protecting the lakes we all depend on!
