Dan Seed (00:00):
Nothing says summer, like heading to the coast to beat the heat. It's a trip that my family and I make every summer, the beach, the waves, the warm, warm, but still refreshing water. It's a rite of a summer experience. And while a shark attack on South Padre Island earlier this summer grabbed attention and headlines, it's important to know that there's something else in the water that could, might maybe ruin your beach trip. That's what we're discussing this month on Big Ideas. A podcast from Texas State University in San Marco. I'm your host, Dan Seed from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. We're joined by Jenna Walker, who is the director of Watershed Services at the Meadow Center for Water and the Environment. Jenna oversees several multi-year grant funded research initiatives, including the Texas General Land Office, sponsored Clean Coast Texas, among other initiatives. She's a graduate of Texas a and m and has her master's in Applied Geography in Resource and environmental Studies from Texas State. Jenna is here to discuss how AI is being used to detect a certain bacteria in Texas waterways. Jenna, welcome to the show.
Jenna Walker (01:04):
Thanks for having me.
Dan Seed (01:05):
So Jenna, tell us a bit about yourself and what drew you to this line of work.
Jenna Walker (01:09):
Well, I'm a seventh generation Texan. My family came to Texas in the 18, late 1830s. And so thinking back to the history of my family, we have deep roots, and it's not only the Texas, but my family, they were settlers of the Texas Hill country, and I'm seeing a lot of changes in the landscape as we know it currently. And so about 10 years ago, I decided to pursue a master's in Resource and Environmental Studies through the geography department here to learn more about water resource management with the mindset of how lucky we are to have these incredibly precious natural resources at our fingertips, not only in the hill country but across the state. And my goal was to get involved with protection of those natural resources, not only for myself but for future generations. I was really interested too in working with landowners and the general public to better understand what challenges were faced with and what opportunities there are to best protect those resources for the future.
(02:30):
And yeah, 10 years later here I am working at the Meadow Center. I just celebrated eight years as a full-time employee last week. And it's been a wild ride, but a dream come true for me and work with some really incredible and brilliant people here and across the university and across the state. Yeah, we had some great opportunities coming down the pipeline now with this new grant funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It's an earmark funding for climate change research, and our Congressman Kazar was the one that identified and secured this funding through Noah. So we're very grateful to him to help funnel that funding to Texas and to Texas State now, and excited to get started, hopefully October one.
Dan Seed (03:32):
Well, that's great. Congratulations on receiving the grant. Congratulations on your eight years of full-time at the Meadow Center. And we will speak about the grant here in a minute. And as I mentioned, my family we're beach lovers. Usually when we go, it's things like jellyfish that are on our mind maybe for the more imaginative, like the kids, it's, oh, are we going to see a shark? Right? But what we're talking about here is what we can't see that might be most alarming. And it takes us back to a 2022 study that found that 55 of 61 coastal beaches in Texas exceeded safe levels of, and everybody out there close your mouth, fecal bacteria on at least one day. Yuck.
Jenna Walker (04:12):
Yeah, it's alarming when you hear it in that context. I do recognize the concern there that the chances of folks getting sick from that is very, very slim actually. So we have our work cut out for us to keep that water quality at a good quality and also raise awareness on what to expect when you hear things like that. So I'll go into that a little bit. And I am in the same boat. I love to get into our refreshing creeks here in central Texas that are maybe 70 or 72 degrees year round. And then also love to go down to the beach and fish and search for shells and swim. Although, yeah, the shark thing, that's a whole nother ball game. But yeah, concerned for not only my own health, but my kids and my family. And so there's a couple different tools that we have to grow our awareness of what we're faced with.
(05:22):
Water quality sampling is a big one. And then also just communicating when there are high spikes of bacteria. We see that usually because of what we call non-point source pollution. So basic terms, it's pollution that you can't point to a pipe and know that there's a permit attached to any pollution coming out of that pipe and going straight into the water source. It's more of these elusive types of pollutants that either get washed into the stream based because of a big rain event, that rain is picking up pollutants along the way and carrying that into the streams.
Dan Seed (06:05):
I was going to say, we just saw an example of that with barrel, right? Anytime there's a hurricane, big flooding like that infrastructure affected, that's when you would probably expect to see these massive amounts of spike, this kind of stuff happen. Spike.
Jenna Walker (06:17):
Spike, yes. So if there's a big rain of it, I'd hold off on swimming for a couple days just to let it get back to its natural system. And for those pollutants to flush out, make their way elsewhere, picking up after your pets is crucial to maintaining good water quality. So we really encourage people to have their bags ready for any type of unwanted. Taking the dogs out for the walk and picking up after them is really crucial. And then also as these huge weather events come through, sometimes it's causing septic systems to overflow or to become faulty and leak into either the contributing streams or be mixed with water sources. We also have for bacteria levels, seeing leaking wastewater pipes and leaking infrastructure that municipal communities are challenged with. So there's a handful of different contributors, and then there's a lot of eyes and water quality monitoring going on along our waterways and in the beaches.
(07:36):
And specifically for beach water quality, I point to the General Land Office Beach Watch program. It's an incredible program that's out measuring water quality sometimes on a weekly basis, mostly monthly, but depending on the quality of the water. And then they post all of that data to beach watch.com, maybe beach watch.org. So check me on that. But it posts water quality and it will rate the quality as good, fair, or don't sweat in a warning. And that's throughout the year any family or visitor to the coast can check specifically the beach that they plan to go to and see not only what the status is of that now, but how it is historically. So that's really good information. These are all wonderful programs, but there are gaps between places and times of the professional water quality. And so with the Meadow Center, are really interested in finding these new tools that can fill in those gaps with more information, more data.
(08:49):
And one of the most exciting opportunities that I think we have is this opportunity to bring in community members and the local group of folks that are interested in getting involved, interested in doing something to help protect their natural systems. So we call that community science where we are training them through a funded program here at the Meadow Center called Texas Stream Team, where we train community members to collect water samples and contribute data towards our statewide online database. And that's what we'll be doing with this NOAA program. There's some new tools that we've identified to be adding to the suite of bacteria sampling that are going to help us gather more data and be able to share that information with the public.
Dan Seed (09:48):
And with regard to that website that you gave, it's Texas beach watch.com. So if people want to go and check that, that's the website, Texas beach watch.com. And before we get into exactly what all you were doing and the technology that's being used, I mean, I look at this and it's great information, but it feels almost like a newspaper. I'm getting the information, but it's a few days late or from a few days ago. And so what you guys are doing is going to make this more real time, which of course is far more valuable for the average beach goer.
Jenna Walker (10:22):
Yes. So we have this idea to be not only collecting more data, but then creating an AI tool that we can feed all of that data into. And then that'll help us identify trends for the future. And we will be starting to develop that tool as soon, well, I would think that it'll be at the end of this year once we have our programs in place.
Dan Seed (10:51):
What is this AI tool? I mean, there's so many variations of AI and AI tools out there. What exactly is it? Well,
Jenna Walker (10:58):
I can't answer that yet, but we see it as it can be a pretty simple process where we have a data set that then we feed into the AI tool and then we can manipulate it to give us projections for the future based on past data. So it sounds complicated, but it's really quite simple with using it as a model to interpret the existing data for
Dan Seed (11:27):
Future for the future. So with this kind of work, I would imagine without those kind of tools though, would be laborious, time intensive, maybe not even possible. Is that what makes this unique? Is that this, now, this tool now makes this kind of projection and count and whatnot possible on that more real time way.
Jenna Walker (11:47):
Models are usually strictly for a more engineer focused line of work that can be a little cryptic or not something that the common or layman can understand or even be able to get involved with or use that information. But this type of tool we're hoping can be user-friendly and really help all communities, either the high tech ones that have a lot of funding versus these others that are just trying to get by and have maybe one person overseeing multiple departments and pulled in different ways.
Dan Seed (12:29):
And again, we're joined by Jenna Walker, the director of watershed services at the Meadow Center for Water in the environment. So Jenna, if I recall correctly, you mentioned that the collection portion of this would begin in October. Correct. So where does that collection process happen? Are we talking about on the beach or are we talking, you mentioned downstream, upstream from there, or are there multiple points where this data is going to come from?
Jenna Walker (12:54):
So for the Texas Dream Team Community Science program, that is statewide. So we train students, volunteers, all kinds of even retirees wide range of folks to be collecting data not only on your accessible creeks and rivers, but even spring sites, marshes, wetlands, all the way down to the bays, estuaries and beach front accessible sites. So that is very wide ranging. For this specific program for the new NOAA grant, we're going to be looking at mostly beachfront sites and then bays and possibly estuaries, but need it to be the coastal marine system because we're looking at the inter caucus bacteria, which is specifically for coastal environments. So we are ranging from all the way from Beaumont all the way down to the Rio Grande Valley. We have some partners in Matagorda County and also Harris County and Oasis County where we expect to plug in right away and be collecting more samples in that area to begin with and then launching it statewide. So that's the focus to begin with. And then we'll go from there. We're going to be training folks and actually fine tuning the tool to begin with. And then starting the trainings where we're training them to use an odd kind of parameter, not often used to measure bacteria. It's actually measuring optical brighteners in the water. But that is,
Dan Seed (14:43):
I'm sorry, which are, yes, optical
Jenna Walker (14:46):
Brighteners. Optical brighteners are really what is used in detergents and even paper to brighten the blue that you see in a lot of detergents. It's like to brighten the detergent, not necessarily to help clean the product or what you're using it for, but just to have that kind of color pop. So that can often be found in wastewater because it's in a lot of detergents, a lot of soaps and stuff like that. So when you are measuring a water sample and you can detect optical brightness, that can tell you that it most likely has a higher bacteria level linked to either wastewater or highly polluted sources. So it's kind of a little hard to wrap my brain around it at first when I first started learning about it. But a simple tool and also inexpensive way to be detecting bacteria. So the way we do it, we would grab a water sample and stick a, what we call cotton on a string or an organic tampon, put that into the water sample and then directly put it in the dark until you can take it to a lab and then shine a black light on it.
(16:10):
And if that it picks up a lot of optical brighteners, that cotton is going to light up, it's going to be bright peak. If it's not exposed to optical brighteners, it's going to be black. So it's a detect or non-detect like absence or presence.
Dan Seed (16:28):
That's really interesting that that's how it's collected. For me, somebody that's not scientific to hear that I'm picturing people going out with gauges and files and things like this, and you're talking like Mr. Wizard kind of stuff here, which is great because for the purpose of this, it does make it easier for people. The average person that's deputized through you guys to do this, to actually go out and do it, which means that you can have a wider reach,
Jenna Walker (16:55):
I would say yes. And it's cheap. I mean, some of those sons cost $20,000 versus box of tampons is 10 bucks. But yes, organic cotton can tell us that. And so that's one of the pilot programs linked with this project. And then another one is a little bit more sophisticated, but still pretty simple, where we would collect a water sample, drop the droplets onto this card that has a film on it that's going to be interacting with the water sample. You flip over this top plastic flap on top of that and just put it into an incubator for 28 hours and then it'll grow the bacteria colony. And then you count from there what the bacteria levels are. And so with our standard bacteria monitoring with Texas Dream team, we use a Petri dish and this, it's called an agar, like a liquid that you mix with the sample. And that can sometimes be either contaminated or expire quickly. It's more expensive. But this new method with it's called an R card, is again very inexpensive. It's pretty straightforward. You just, you have to maintain a high quality of preventing contamination, but just dropping those droplets onto that card, flip over that little flap, and then just put it in the incubator, which you can buy from tractor supply or an outdoor store.
(18:38):
And then that will allow them to count bacteria levels and report for that day.
Dan Seed (18:43):
So here with this situation, we're talking about coastal waterways. Is this something that with this kind of, I'll call it rudimentary technology that you're compared to the other stuff, is this something that you would envision or that you could see being used wider across the state, which would I would imagine be beneficial?
Jenna Walker (19:03):
Yes, and that's the plan to really hone in on the protocols and work out any final kinks in this pilot project stage and then rolling it out statewide and Texas Dream team, we've already trained over like 12,000 volunteers over the past 30 years. So it's a very established and high esteem program. But for these new pilot type projects, we need a lot of data upfront to really fine tune it before we can launch it statewide.
Dan Seed (19:37):
So this model that you're talking about, this AI information that you're going to get, you were mentioning that it's predictive in a sense, it creates models and whatnot. How does it do that? I mean, walk us through that. I can't wrap my head around that, that today may be different from next week. So how does it create that model? How is that model used too?
Jenna Walker (20:00):
So it's going to take into account well temperature for one thing. And so looking at past temperatures and really what the forecast would be and then interacting that with the bacteria levels and other parameters that we have access to through that wide range of professional monitoring and then calculate it from there. So we don't have the details yet of really the nuts and bolts, but we see it as an opportunity for predictive.
Dan Seed (20:34):
It almost sounds like meteorological tool, like the weather people use where exactly. Look at models and whatnot. That's pretty accurate to say. Yeah. Okay. So in getting back again to what you were talking about earlier with the idea that yes, you're going to focus on the coast, but it goes back into the environment inland to understand this, I think it's another, for me at least, whenever I talk to folks that are involved in the environment and situations like this, it's always interesting to hear where far away we don't think about what we do, how it impacts the coast. But I mean, in a large state like Texas with rivers flowing into the coast, it's a big problem. Right? So you mentioned awareness as one of the areas that you guys really wanted to get out of this. So what kind of awareness are you hoping that this will create?
Jenna Walker (21:25):
We have some great opportunities, and I want to highlight the value of our partnerships across the state. We have over a hundred partners with groups that are plugged in locally. They really know the audience and they know the community well. So that's the goal there is to launch the program. We see it as an educational tool with everyone that we're training, but then also all of their networks, they go and share it with all their friends and family, this is what I'm up to and listen to what I just got trained in. Their grandkids accompany them, or they're looking to build a resume and they want these hands-on experiences that can really expand their knowledge and also their networks. It's a win-win there. And then, yeah, all kinds of outreach events with partners in mind where they would be taking our information to share with the community at Texas State, at the Meadow Center, I encourage everyone to come see us, come on a glass bottom boat ride.
(22:34):
You'll hear about these opportunities for everyone to do their part to keep our waterways clean. That includes picking up all the trash, leaving no trace when you go out and maybe picking up a little extra that's left on the ground because that's washing into our waterways. We have about 120,000 visitors a year here at the Meadow Center to either ride our glass bottom boats or explore our wetland boardwalk and even just walk the trails. It's stunningly beautiful. You see these springs just rising out of limestone river beds and from the glass bottom boat, you can peer in and see that happening in real time. So it's really incredible.
Dan Seed (23:26):
I was going to say it gives a real appreciation, right? Because water, we see the surface, we don't often see deep, but when you're able to actually peer down and see the ecosystem and the way that it works, it's really eyeopening. And to that point, the idea that water's there, we go to it, we play in it when we go to the beach, but otherwise we don't really think of it. What kind of environmental impact does this situation have on the ocean at large where we are? I mean, if there's too much of this fecal matter going in, how does it disrupt the biodiversity? How does it disrupt the environment under the wave?
Jenna Walker (24:05):
Well, I think we're seeing higher bacteria levels because of these extreme weather events, but also because of our creeks and rivers, maybe not making it all the way to the coast. So there's less of that solution to pollution and dilution effect. And so those of us that are landlocked, we do have a direct impact on our coastal systems when it comes to how much water we use and how much water we leave for the fish and for downstream users and the wildlife along the way, we all have the opportunity to have a lighter footprint and be mindful of really how much water we're all using. I really encourage folks to even just know their household daily use average and start there just knowing it and then maybe trying to dial it back from there is a huge step. And then also working as a community to voice concerns and talk to leaders and those that are in charge of development and growth and speaking up about how important it is to be incorporating more sustainable type buildings into future development.
(25:30):
We're seeing these extreme weather events. We're in an awful drought right now. We call it a green drought because we are seeing some rain, but it's not falling in the right place to recharge our aquifers, recharge our rivers and springs. And so really keeping that in mind. And then also when it comes to growth planning for that in the future. And there are some amazing new technologies and practices that we're learning about with this more popular recent trend called One Water, where it's an integrated management system where we manage our drinking water, our wastewater, storm water, rainwater, all these as one system instead of separate and seeing the value and all of that. And as far as wastewater, making sure that we don't just get that out of sight as quickly as possible. We see ways to utilize it, recycle it, treat it, and then reuse it or capture it so that we can either allow it to recharge the aquifer or recharge our sources. And so yeah, there's a lot of great opportunities. And just for the general public, I think being aware of those and then speaking up about them and why they matter, and holding our thought leaders accountable for that is really going to be important as we move forward.
Dan Seed (27:11):
So a couple points here, a couple questions before we wrap up. One, obviously you need people for the stream team. How can people join? What do they need to do? And then this is not just, you're talking about this, but this is a much larger effort as we know with people on the stream team and the people at the Meadow Center for the Environment Water and the environment.
Jenna Walker (27:33):
Yes. So anyone that is interested in getting involved, please visit our website, Texas stream team.org. It's tx stream team.org. And we have a calendar there for folks to see where trainings are in their area or they can reach out to us and find out, always looking for more volunteers across the state. So not just the coast, but really anywhere we can take on more volunteers to monitor water quality. And then, yeah, I want to give a shout out to the Meadow Center and my team with watershed services. We're small but mighty. We have a lot of great ideas and these wonderful opportunities to be making a difference in the world and really protecting these precious, natural resources that all of us Texans are lucky to have.
Dan Seed (28:26):
Well, the work that you all do there is always fascinating. It's always interesting, and it's obviously necessary. So Jenna Walker, thank you so much for joining us and bringing this information to us.
Jenna Walker (28:37):
Thank you, Dan. Take care.
Dan Seed (28:38):
Thank you. And thank you for the pleasure of your time in downloading and listening to another episode of Big Ideas. We'll be back next month with a new episode. Until then, stay well and stay informed.