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Fifty-five years ago, about 20 million Americans turned out for the first Earth Day to demonstrate their desire to protect and preserve our natural world. That was 1970, the same year that President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

On Earth Day 2025, the Center for Prairie Studies sponsored an event at Arbor Lake for 51���appians who wanted to learn about what’s in Iowa’s rivers and streams, led by the center’s interim director, Liz Queathem, and Ginny Malcomson, water-quality coordinator at Polk County Conservation. The students, faculty, and staff who participated learned how to test for transparency, pH, nitrate and nitrite, dissolved oxygen, phosphate, chloride (salt), and temperature. 

Saylor Murphy ’28 says she attended the event because she wanted to know more about Iowa’s water-quality issues. A native of San Francisco, she’s a student in Queathem’s Environmental Studies class. Robin Linse ’28 is also from California. She plans to major in anthropology. “I really wanted to know more about water quality in Iowa,” Linse says.

Citizen science programs to track water-quality data are more important than ever, Queathem said. “Waterways in Iowa are stressed like never before, and the trusted repositories of environmental data are being eviscerated,” she explained. “If we want to know what's going on, increasingly it's good if we can collect data ourselves.”

Overall, the water quality in Arbor Lake was better than expected, but that doesn’t mean Iowa waterways are in the clear. “We have an issue,” Queathem said. “But it’s not too late. We can fix it.”

Malcomson agreed. “Every time there’s a problem, there’s a solution.”