SAVE OUR STREAMS PROJECT

Project Overview 

LACA started a new water quality project in 2022 focused on collecting data on the health of the streams and creeks in the Lake Anna Watershed. The program, called Save Our Streams, is made possible through the work of LACA volunteers and partnerships with the Lake Anna State Park and Louisa County High School.

The Virginia Save Our Streams program is part of the Izaak Walton League of America (IWLA) effort that has a fifty-year history of monitoring the health of rivers, streams, and creeks across the United States. The IWLA program began in 1969 with volunteers cleaning up trash from their local waterways and reporting problems like streams becoming clogged with silt.

The IWLA program was expanded in the 1980s to include training of volunteers to collect scientifically valid data to assess water quality in their local streams. Today, trained volunteer stream monitors across the country are uncovering pollution problems and urging their local leaders to act on water quality. The work of these volunteers also creates a critical record of water quality over time, making it possible to quickly identify pollution problems that develop in the future.

The Save Our Streams program focuses on the macroinvertebrates (“critters”) living in the creeks and streams to identify pollution issues. Macro means that you can see them with the naked eye, and invertebrates means they do not have a backbone. We look for critters that live in the water on the bottom of the creek under rocks and organic debris.