Surface Water Quality in Otsego County, NY, Prior to Potential Natural Gas Exploration
Surface water quality in Otsego County, NY, prior to potential natural gas exploration 1 Sarah Crosier Abstract –Baseline water quality data was established for Otsego County, NY prior to potential natural gas exploration. Hydraulic fracturing may contaminate surface water with chemicals, salts and sediments. Averages for pH, total dissolved solids, and conductivity were calculated for 50 Otsego County streams from data collected using a YSI® multi-parameter probe from August 2010 – April 2012. Limestone bedrock sub-watersheds had significantly higher conductivity, TDS and pH than shale bedrock sub-watersheds. Winter and summer peaks and fall and spring lows occurred in conductivity and TDS. Road salt use, precipitation and evaporation likely caused seasonal variation. Sub-watershed size had no significant effect on parameters. These data will serve as a control for future water quality testing if hydraulic fracturing occurs in Otsego County, NY. INTRODUCTION This study was conducted to identify baseline water quality conditions at base flow for streams in Otsego County. Water quality varies between streams due to different physical, chemical, and microbiological characteristics (Rajeshwari and Saraswathi 2009). These factors are dependent upon topography, geology, vegetative cover (Dosskey et al. 2010), land use in a watershed (Ou and Wang 2011) and watershed size (Landers et al. 2007). Stream chemistry varies naturally throughout the seasons due to changes in precipitation, evaporation, nutrient input, and biotic activity within the streams. Anthropogenic pollutants such as road salt (Jackson and Jobbágy 2005, Kaushal et al. 2005), urban storm water runoff and agricultural pesticides, nutrients, and sediments (Madden et al. 2007) also affect stream quality variably.
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