What lies beneath

Red Cedar River cleaner than what some expect; MSU studies makeup of aquatic life

Whenever Mark Stephens hears people call the Red Cedar River dirty, he’s always quick to defend it.

“It’s an incredible river with a lot of life and top water quality,” he said.

Stephens works as an education program coordinator in the MSU Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies, and through his research, he has found opinions of the river might be more stereotypical than substantive.

“A lot of people think it’s a dead sewer,” he said. “If more people knew about the rivers around here and would use them, then maybe they would care for them more.”

Stephens, along with students and faculty at MSU, are doing their part to keep MSU’s most storied body of water clean, even if some people think otherwise.

The old Red Cedar

The story of the river’s perception almost is as old the fight song dedicated to it, said Ruth Kline-Robach, outreach specialist at the MSU Institute of Water Research.

In the 1970s, before the federal government passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, the river deserved its dirty label, Kline-Robach said. The river was a victim of dumping and waste from people and companies in the region because there were no laws protecting the river’s health.

“Anything was fair game for getting discharged into the river,” she said. “We have alums that come to campus who jokingly say they remember when they could walk across the river in the winter as well as the summer because it was so polluted.”

But now that legislation protecting the water quality of the country’s rivers has been passed, Stephens said the Red Cedar River has become one of the healthiest rivers in the region, despite the fact that some people don’t treat it that way.

Life support

Underneath the Red Cedar’s murky, brown water is an array of diverse life, Stephens said.

Stephens has been researching the river’s macroinvertebrates — such as some insects — for years, and said despite stereotypes that would lead people to believe the opposite, the Red Cedar actually is a thriving ecosystem.

Macroinvertebrates are near the bottom of the food chain, he said, and when those organisms are healthy, it’s a very good indicator of the health of other animals in the river.

Macroinvertebrates are grouped into three categories that are ranked on the quality of water needed to sustain the organisms. Of the seven organisms in class one, which need the highest quality of water to live, the river contained five, Stephens said.

“The rivers in this area are very good rivers,” he said. “People just don’t realize it because of the city or they might have a lot of trash in them.”

Stephens said he’s seen a variety of wildlife around the river, including salmon, pike, smallmouth bass, walleye, rainbow trout and beavers. Most students don’t get to see these animals because of the dark water, he said, which also is why many people think the river is dirty.

“If it’s crystal clear that means there isn’t life in that — the way it’s supposed to be,” he said.

With electrified backpacks and shock sticks, battalions of fisheries and wildlife students routinely inspect the fish inhabiting the river.

As part of one of the major’s required labs, students venture to the river to stun, study and then return fish.

Fisheries and wildlife junior Phil Ganz, as well as many other students, took samples of the fishes’ scales, which he said show the fishes’ age and health and can help predict population numbers.

“A lot of people don’t know how healthy the Red Cedar is,” Ganz said. “To be honest, I thought it was less healthy than it is before I went into it and looked at the fish in there.”

Staying clean

In the middle of the weekend’s Halloween festivities, the MSU Fisheries and Wildlife Club was out trying to help eliminate the river’s dirty appearance.

The group held its semi-annual Red Cedar River Clean-up on Saturday, which launched canoes up and down the Red Cedar from the MSU Canoe Livery near Bessey Hall to collect garbage from the water.

Club members and volunteers combed the edges of the rivers, pulling out trash such as bottles, cans, chairs, bikes, furniture frames and even a full-sized couch.

“Who else is going to do it?” said Phil Kavouriaris, a zoology junior who volunteered at the cleanup. “We have to maintain some sort of integrity and have pride in the old Red Cedar.”

The club has taken part in a river cleanup each semester for eight years, said Amy Viscito, the club’s vice president and a fisheries and wildlife senior.

“The river cleanup is a way for students to feel more connected to campus,” Viscito said. “In a way, it’s kind of depressing that people feel the river is a place to dispose of trash. … I think if people respected the river more as a living habitat then they wouldn’t put the bikes in the river, they wouldn’t put the couches in the river and everything else that you find in there.”

Although some people in the MSU community are trying to improve the river, Kline-Robach said the responsibility ultimately lies with the students.

“The students are guardians of the river,” she said. “We’re so fortunate to have this river running through the heart of our campus and we can all play a role in protecting the water quality of the Red Cedar.”