We are Chimacum Elementary 6th grade students and we test the water quality of Chimacum Creek every year to see how it’s doing. My claim is that Chimacum Creek is doing well.
My evidence comes from six water quality parameters. The dissolved oxygen in our creek has gone from mostly 7 mg/L to 8 mg/L. Salmon and trout need a minimum of 6 to 7 mg/L so they have enough D.O. Salmon and trout live in freshwater with slightly acidic pH, which is less than 7. Our creek has gone from 6.1 to 6.7, which is within that range. Salmon and trout have an optimal stream temperature of 54 degrees Fahrenheit and our creek has a range of 39 degrees F to 60 degrees F in the fall, early winter, and spring and that is well within the range needed by the fish. Salmon and trout returning to lay eggs need colder water, about 39 degrees, and the eggs need the water to be from 39 degrees to 44 degrees F and that is exactly what we’ve gotten in the winter. Our creek water is very clear, the turbidity ranges from 0 to 63.7 NTU and that is very clear water.
From the conductivity we can tell that our creek is within the correct range of salts for freshwater so that is good. The final parameter we measured is the flow rate and from the flow rate we calculated the stream flow which was on average about 135 gal/s this year. We have had a few years of heavy water flow from lots of rain, as high as 3400 gal/s, and years of low flow, as low as 54 gal/s, and since the fish are returning year after as shown by our fish trapping fish counts, we can conclude that the flow has been within an acceptable range for our fish to survive.
I think this happened because our community and the farms in the Chimacum Valley are doing a great job of not polluting our creek. My data support my claim because all six parameters are well within the range of what our fish need and neither the pH nor the conductivity point to any pollution in our creek.
