Fall 2016 eNewsletter

Alicia Ritzenthaler Recognized by State of Michigan

CILER staff Alicia Ritzenthaler, and former CILER staff Eva Kramer, were recently recognized at the Harrison Township Environmental Committee’s annual awards ceremony, each receiving special tributes from the State of Michigan for their bacterial water quality monitoring efforts in Lake St. Clair and the Clinton River watershed.  The event was held October 11th at the Floyd W. Rosso Hall in Harrison Township, MI.

In order to protect public health, local county health departments monitor community beaches for aquatic bacteria levels throughout the swimming season.  Due to limitations of analysis methods, test results are not instantaneous.  Therefore, beach closures and advisories are commonly based on day-old bacterial monitoring results.  The long term goal of the CILER/GLERL project was to develop a bacterial water quality forecasting system to improve predictions of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) levels.  This system would ultimately help beach managers’ and local authorities’ ability to predict FIB water quality standard violations.  FIB monitoring was conducted throughout the Clinton River watershed and Lake St. Clair in order to support model calibration and confirmation.

Alicia Ritzenthaler will be leaving us to take a position with LimnoTech’s Washington D.C. office, working on stormwater issues in urban areas.  Alicia has worked on several important projects and will be sorely missed, but we want to take this opportunity to say thank you and congratulate her on this award and her new position.