Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 26, 1995                   TAG: 9511270004
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-13   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FOR NOW, CONNELLY'S RUN APPEARS TO BE HEALTHY

Students from the class will keep readers updated on what they're learning - about the stream, and about science. Today's column is by Steve Homiak, a Radford High School senior.

After six weeks of research, Mr. Taylor's applied chemistry class is finding Connelly's's Run to be healthy. But we still have concerns for the future health of the stream.

Seventeen juniors and seniors in our class have been going to the stream in Wildwood Park since the beginning of the school year. We determined the health of the stream through chemical testing and biological monitoring.

Several weeks ago, we went down to the stream and a few of us put on green rubber hip boots that made us look like trout fisherman. We weren't fishing for trout, though, we were fishing for aquatic insects.

In class, we learned how to identify the different groups of organisms that can live in streams. We then counted how many different organisms we found in Connelly's Run. Based on those counts, we rated our stream at 29. (Ratings of 22 and above mean excellent water quality.)

Many of the organisms we found have to live in clean water. For example, one of the groups we found in abundance was the caddisfly larvae. We found more than 100 of them and because they are so pollution-sensitive, they can thrive in a clean stream like Connelly's's Run.

Besides the biological monitoring, we have done chemical tests on the creek. One of the 15 studies we do is chlorine.

My partner, Bucky O'Neal, and I found no evidence of chlorine in the stream. This is good because chlorine can burn the gills of aquatic animals if there is too much of it in the water. We'll share results of other tests in future updates.

There are still a few areas that we are concerned about, though, like the construction to widen Tyler Avenue. The runoff from that construction could add a lot more silt to the stream.

Silt covers the insects' habitat. A great deal of silt for a caddisfly would be like ash from a volcano covering Radford. Silt, like ash, could suffocate living things if there was enough of it.

The Radford landfill also is a concern for us. If it were ever to leak, the landfill run-off could harm the organisms in the stream. We'll be going on a field trip to the landfill to learn about its safety features in a few weeks.

Our class will perform the chemical tests once a month for the rest of the school year. But we'll only do the biological tests three more times so that the class doesn't disturb the environment and damage the living things we're trying to study.

In the next few weeks, we'll start building a model of the stream in our classroom. We'll be able to watch what organisms grow and manipulate the environment to see what changes the stream.

When Steve Homiak isn't up to his knees in water looking for caddisflies, he's out hunting in the Belle Spring area, though he won't reveal the exact location of his lucky spot. A Draper resident, he says applied biology and machine shop are his favorite classes "because I'm doing well in both."