Happy fall! We’re all enjoying the cooler temperatures here and hope that you are too. As we enter the rainy season, conserving and protecting our water resources is still as important as ever. Fortunately, the coming rains give us the opportunity to see our best management practices (BMPs) do the work they were built for! Three vegetated filter strips were constructed at the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association headquarters, the tenth and final BMP to be constructed in the watershed as part of the current project.
We also updated the water quality data for active monitoring sites along Cypress Creek and the Blanco River to display the results from the four most recent quarters. View the water quality data section of our website to see the flow, E.coli, and dissolved oxygen (DO) results.
In the coming months, we will install educational signage for all of the BMP projects and hope that you will find these resources helpful to understand how these BMPs are protecting and conserving water quality in Cypress Creek. By the end of the year, a self-guided tour of all Cypress Creek Watershed BMPs will be available to view on your desktop or cell phone. Stay tuned for details!
We hosted a Riparian Design Workshop and stakeholder meeting in September to provide updates from our partners and a project progress report from our Watershed Coordinator, Nick Dornak. Hays County Master Naturalists Tom Jones and Larry Calvert, as well as Deputy Director of Watershed Services Jenna Walker, gave presentations on different aspects of riparian restoration such as geology, a case study over a riparian restoration project, and how community members can get involved in riparian restoration projects. If you could not make it to the meeting and workshop, you can find meeting notes and the presentations on our website.
Keep reading to learn about what our partners have been up to, upcoming events and volunteer opportunities, and simple conservation tips that you can implement into your everyday life!