The bright blue sky and the beautiful autumn woodland colors created a wonderful outdoor laboratory for sixteen Judson students along with their professor, Dr. Thomas Wilson. The group was involved in an environmental mission to learn how they could help in the efforts to preserve and protect the waterways of Alabama.

Alabama Water Watch is a stream and lake monitoring program developed by Auburn University, Troy State University and the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. Certification in the Water Watch Program is one way that local citizens can become active in protecting one of the State’s most important resources, its waters.

Alabama Water Watch strives to train volunteers to become certified water quality monitors. When these water quality monitors leave the workshop they are prepared and encouraged to work at their local level to educate friends and neighbors about the importance of water quality.

All eighteen Judson participants earned their basic water quality monitoring certification at this workshop on November 11, 1999. The Basic Certification and Bacterial Training Workshop was held at Old Cahawba Park, where the Cahaba empties into the Alabama River.

The workshop was led by Patti Hurley of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and assisted by Julie Lyons of Old Cahawba Park. Earning this certification required the group to get down and dirty at Clear Creek, a tributary of the Cahaba River. All participants were proud of what they had accomplished and looked forward to organizing monitoring teams in the near future. The Water Watch Team from Judson plans to begin monitoring the Cahaba River, Rice Creek and Dry Creek in Perry County.