The East Hampton Town Trustees voted on Monday to accept the proposal from Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences for his lab's 2022 water quality monitoring program. Dr. Gobler has been sampling water bodies under trustee jurisdiction since 2013, after toxic cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, blooms were first detected in Georgica Pond.
Dr. Gobler measures temperature, salinity, chlorophyll a, dissolved oxygen, and harmful algae. This year, he proposed adding sampling of two sites in Little Northwest Creek.
The trustees also accepted Dr. Gobler's proposal for a sediment survey of Accabonac Harbor. Sediment type, organic matter content, thickness of muds, abundance of macrophytes, and estimated sediment nutrient flux -- the transfer of nutrient species from sediments to overlying water and from water to sediments -- will be quantified at more than 20 sites across the harbor, with more concentrated samples around the Louse Point boat launch and culvert region. This, said John Aldred, could provide "a very useful set of data for us," allowing coordination with other efforts to identify areas in need of remediation and upland efforts to assist in that remediation.
The additional sampling will increase the annual cost of the sampling program from $60,000 to $74,000.
