(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Environmental Protection Commission has approved a new three-year contract for monitoring the water quality in the state’s lakes. D-N-R environmental specialist Dan Kendall says the contract continues the partnership with Iowa State University. “I-S-U will be collecting samples from 154 sites, and then the D-N-R will be collecting samples from an additional lake sites,” he says. They are testing for several things in the lakes, including phosphorus levels. Kendall as the data is used for the Clean Water Act water quality assessments report produced by the D-N-R every two years.  “This monitoring typically yields about 10-thosuand sampling results from over 600 sampling events for each year of this contract,” he says.

He says the Lake Restoration organizations uses the data from this program to prioritize their lakes in their restoration plan. The also use it to track the effectiveness of things like alum (aluminum sulfate) treatments in lake restoration efforts.  “Alum treatments are often used as a tool to reduce that internal load of phosphorus in a lake, and then that reduction of phosphorus and often lead to the reduction of phytoplankton overgrowth or algal bloom conditions in the lake,” he says. “So they were wanting to be able to track their efforts as they as they do these applications.” Kendall says I-S-U has a new tool that will help them in monitoring lake water quality.

“I-S-U has acquired a flow cam Cyano, which is essentially an automated imaging microscope that can differentiate between the different types of phytoplankton and cyanobacteria,” Kendall says. “And this new process will basically allow the lab to identify the samples faster as well as kind of in that time frame that that we really want to be able to see the information.” Kendall says this contract cost is more than one-point-seven million dollars ($1,741,679), a 20 percent increase. “This is due to several factors, one of which is we’re going from a two-year contract back to a three-year contract again,” he says. “And then some of the other factors contributing to this increase are staff and technician salary increases at I-S-U, increases in the cost of supplies and reagents for analysis, we’ve kind of seen a big jump there. And then increased transportation costs.”

Kendall was asked by a commissioner if working with public agencies and their increased salary costs is the best way to go. He says the legislature requires they work with public agencies and says it is a delicate balance of working with universities and continually trying to see what they can do to limit costs without reducing services.