Lakeside Laboratory Director Mary Skopec and CLAMP coordinator Jane Shuttleworth, teamed with the Hygienic Lab’s environmental lab specialist Dennis Heimdal to thank those who worked 400 hours this summer to collect data about water quality from nine Dickinson County lakes. In the following article, by Jane Shuttleworth, they salute the volunteers, externs and interns who helped make this possible.

Volunteers from the Cooperative Lakes Area Monitoring Project gather with coordinator Jane Shuttleworth (second row, first from left) and SHL’s Dennis Heimdal (back row, fifth from right).

Here is a big shout out and thanks to the persons listed below who helped complete the 19th consecutive sampling season of Dickinson County lakes as volunteers for the Cooperative Lakes Area Monitoring Program (CLAMP). CLAMP is coordinated by the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory in partnership with the State Hygienic Lab at Lakeside, with funding support from the Friends of Lakeside Lab. CLAMP participants cut the cost of the monitoring at least in half by volunteering their time and boats to collect field measurements and water samples.

Each year the CLAMP project continues, the data set becomes a more valuable and powerful tool for understanding the difference between natural variations and long-term water quality trends of Dickinson County lakes. Preliminary analysis of data shows increased water clarity and nutrient reduction in West Okoboji and several other lakes since the 1970s when the first Iowa Great Lakes watershed study was conducted by Roger Bachman and John Jones of Iowa State University.

In addition, we thank the Friends of Lakeside Lab for funding and the State Hygienic Lab for supporting two externships for local science teachers Art Hellert of Spirit Lake and Marc Benedict of Graettinger-Terrill. They were selected from a competitive applicant pool and spent the summer working with Dennis Heimdal, environmental scientist with the State Hygienic Lab at Lakeside, analyzing data and developing projects to incorporate CLAMP data into their classrooms.

Hygienic Lab intern Kyle Read, and externs Marc Benedict and Art Hellert joined 43 other volunteers who logged more than 400 hours monitoring the health of Dickinson County lakes in 2017.