Robert Antibus of Bluffton was re-elected to the Blanchard River Watershed Partnership board of directors for 2017 at the partnership’s annual meeting held at the Hancock Agricultural Center, according to Phil Martin coordinator of the partnership.

Antibus represents the Riley Creek watershed on the board.

A COPY OF THE WATERSHED NEWSLETTER IS ATTACHED AT THE END OF THIS STORY -

The watershed partnership addresses problems and concerns that affect the health of the Blanchard River watershed and educates residents to the dynamics of the river and its tributaries, which includes Riley Creek.

Among reports given at the annual meeting included updates on two Great Lake Commission grants that continue to be active.

Those grants are:
• The Upper Riley Creek (Allen County portion).
•  The Middle Riley.

The BRWP continues to do water quality monitoring. It monitored 21 sites on the Blanchard River, Lye Creek, Riley Creek and Little Riley Creek. The spring monitoring was completed on July 5. The fall monitoring was completed on Oct. 5.

Riley Creek and Little Riley Creek monitor report

Five sites were monitored on Riley during the spring. Of these five sites, four showed a Stream Quality Assessment of fair. The other site was good.

On Little Riley Creek only one site was fair while the other two sites were poor. Like Lye Creek, Riley Creek and Little Riley Creek showed the taxa (a taxonomic category or group, such as a phylum, order, family, genus or species.) with the largest number were from the most sensitive group with 47.4% of the taxa.

The somewhat sensitive group represented 31.6% of taxa. With these two categories showing almost 80% of the taxa, one could conclude that the water quality was still very good. The loss of habitat is the main cause for the number of taxa being lower.

Sixteen sites were monitored during fall 2016 on the Blanchard River (8), Lye Creek (2) and Riley Creek (6).

There was no monitoring done on Little Riley Creek due to very little water in the riffle pools. Rock grabs were used at each site. D-rings were used on the Blanchard River sites, except for the riffle dams. There was very little rain during August and September so the water level was lower than normal.

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