Watershed Watch Volunteer Spotlight: Tom

Meet Tom, a retired chemist who lives in Cranston! He is working on our partnership with URI's Watershed Watch, a volunteer monitoring program where volunteers with any amount of experience do weekly water sampling and measurement from Spring to Fall that helps scientists gauge the health of the entire watershed over months and years.

Tom loves the water, is a URI alumnus, and cares about this project because water quality is so important: "we swim in it, we drink from it, fish comes from it... and maybe we find [a polluter], and can improve water quality!" His favorite part of volunteering is "all of it!" plus the fact he gets to be outside, go out on the water in a boat, and "turn [his] kitchen into a chemistry lab." You don't need any experience to join the Watershed Watch - we have special trainings and support for anyone to learn these simple monitoring techniques that can make a big difference.

We take new volunteers every May - reach out to rkopp@asri.org to get more info! If you want to get involved with the Stormwater Innovation Lab, citizen science, and keeping our water bodies safe this summer, make sure to make it to our Cyanobacteria Monitoring Workshop nights every other Tuesday, where we teach you all about sampling, identifying and fighting cyanobacteria algea blooms in Providence ponds. Event link: https://fb.me/e/1SqAOizOW