Detailed Description
The 14th Mohawk Watershed Symposium offers an exciting and diverse set of presentations on water quality, fisheries and habitats, flooding and resilience, and recreation and stewardship. The 2021-2026 Mohawk River Basin Action Agenda, our critical guiding document, focuses on conserving, preserving, and restoring the Mohawk River Watershed while helping to manage the ecosystem services for a sustainable future. Much of the defining discussion by stakeholders occurs at the annual Mohawk Watershed Symposium, and given this watershed blueprint and ongoing environmental change, we see that the challenge ahead is enormous.
We are experiencing a firehose of environmental change. This last year (2023) was globally the warmest year on record. Winter in the Mohawk Watershed and in the Northeast US was also the warmest on record. The Great Lakes - a source of moisture to the Mohawk Watershed - have the lowest levels of ice cover ever recorded, which affects lake-effect precipitation. The North Atlantic - another source of moisture for the Watershed - is warming remarkably quickly. The Northeast has experienced the largest increase in extreme precipitation in the nation.
There are important warning signs that we may be at a key inflection point. Changes have already occurred in the Watershed, and there is widespread recognition by the public that a response is needed. We as stakeholders need to understand quickly how these changes manifest themselves in the Watershed, and we also need to develop and implement strategies to build resilience and adaptation. The firehose of change affects water quality and drinking water, fisheries, flooding, and infrastructure. If we layer on problems with our aging pipes, bridges, and dams, it is not hard to see that the problems are acute. If we proceed at a business-as-usual pace, we will fail. A critical question is how we respond to these changes and how fast we can respond. Key players in all of this are the stakeholders in the basin who can direct and shape the response.
Flooding remains a central concern of many stakeholders. Flood dynamics are changing in a significant way due to warmer winters and an increase in extreme weather events. The release of the Upstate NY Flood Mitigation task force report in July 2023 was welcome because it illuminated the flood hazard and mitigation options here in the Mohawk Watershed and in the adjacent Oswego Watershed. One thing this report did was highlight the vulnerability of our infrastructure to damaging floods. The report stressed the need for a numerical watershed model for the Mohawk, which will be critically important for understanding flood events and how the channels and floodplains are modified by extreme weather events. The task force report also highlighted the need to address sedimentation in the main stem that is driven by erosion in tributaries; this will be a major challenge.
Water quality remains a central issue in the Watershed. and a large number of stakeholders are focused on improving water quality. For a healthy and vibrant ecosystem and the ecosystem services that the River provides, we need clean water, including drinking water. Fortunately, the quality of drinking water in the Watershed is receiving more and more scrutiny due to legislation associated with the EPA Lead and Copper Rule, lead-testing in schools, and PFAS testing.
Road salt is causing considerable damage to our aquatic ecosystems and drinking water supplies. In September 2023 the Adirondack Road Salt Reduction Task Force released its long-awaited report on assessment and recommendations for salt reduction in the Adirondacks. There is hope that this report will pave the way for a statewide approach to reducing salt, because, as the report shows, the most severe problems are outside the Blue Line, and this is especially true in urban areas in the Mohawk Watershed. A critical piece of the task force report is a much-needed discussion of the regulatory standard for chloride in surface waters.
Our understanding of aquatic organisms and pollution has advanced in remarkable ways in part due to the ability to identify genetic material in water. Environmental DNA (eDNA) is being used to track invasive species that are accessing the Mohawk Watershed through the Erie Canal, and to understand how dams are keeping some native migratory fish from accessing the Watershed. Water-quality monitoring benefits from dramatic reduction in cost, and in addition the source of bacteria in polluted waters can be pinpointed using host-specific genetic markers in water samples (qPCR) using Microbial Source tracking (MST). Molecular methods are also being coupled with nutrient sampling to explore microbial populations in the Mohawk and the potential for formation of toxic algal blooms. Therefore we are at a point where we are addressing old problems with new analytical tools, and addressing new problems with those same tools.
A major concern are threats to ecosystem integrity in the Mohawk Watershed from aquatic invasive species (AIS). As we have seen in the past few years, the invasive pressure is primarily west to east, and mainly along the Erie Canal Corridor. We have watched the stunning success of the Round Goby, which entered the Mohawk and worked its way into the Hudson River. With such a high density of invasive species in the Great Lakes due to dumping of ballast water, there is pressure to stem the flow of AIS that are entering the Hudson-Mohawk from the west. This is complicated and difficult, and involves multiple levels of stakeholder engagement.
Hopefully we are entering a new era of increased communication and stakeholder engagement in the Mohawk Watershed. Stewardship and education at the community level are a critical piece of effective watershed management. Youth education programs centered on water quality and ecosystem health ensure that all our waterways pass into the hands of the next generation with active, engaged, and knowledgeable stewards in place.
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