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H2O = Help to others Craven photo Bill Grimm, a rancher and Little Butte Creek landowner, does a series of weekly tests on creek water near his home as part of a pioneering effort that uses volunteers to monitor water quality in important Rogue River tributaries. Neighbors help officials check �vital signs� of Little Butte Creek By Melissa Martin LAKE CREEK � Sheep rancher Bill Grimm turns into a chemist on Wednesdays. He carries a box of testing equipment down a deer trail to the banks of the South Fork of Little Butte Creek, which flows behind his 100-year-old home. He records the water temperature, which is 52.5 degrees Fahrenheit on this day. Then he fills a Gatorade bottle and takes it back to his "laboratory" � a picnic table in a pasture with Heppsie Mountain providing the backdrop. Grimm pours a little water into a glass tube and adds a drop of test chemical, swishing it around as the water changes from black to midnight blue to pale blue to clear. "I�m checking the vital signs of the creek," he said. Grimm is one of 15 property owners who regularly test the quality of the water in Little Butte and other tributaries of the Rogue River. The pioneering two-year-old volunteer monitoring program sponsored by the Little Butte Creek Watershed Council and the Upper Rogue Watershed Association is an effort to keep tabs on the quality of local streams that haven�t gotten the scrutiny they deserve, said Frances Oyung, the watersheds� coordinator for volunteer monitoring. "DEQ is responsible for monitoring surface water, but they don�t have the resources to test all the creeks,�� said Oyung. "We can never pay all these volunteers. That data wouldn�t exist without people like Bill Grimm." "We should all be concerned about the quality of water," says Lu Anthony, coordinator of the Little Butte council. It�s one of seven watershed councils concerned with the water that flows into the Rogue River, from its source at Boundary Springs near Crater Lake to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean. "It certainly can affect our lives, whether we are drinking it, putting it on our gardens or giving it to our animals. Everything needs clean water." Property owners like Grimm test chemical and physical properties of the water for mineral content, alkalinity, nitrates and dissolved oxygen. The oxygen level tells how easily fish can breathe in the water, Oyung said. While it�s a common practice in the Rogue Valley to test the purity of creeks and streams, it�s unusual for the "chemists" to be ranchers, retirees and other creek dwellers, according to Brad Prior, Rogue Basin specialist for the Department of Environmental Quality. "Sometimes people get paranoid about data," Prior said. "They think we�re looking for something or twisting the numbers. But this way, the property owners know there is credibility because they trust their neighbors." Clean streams are important to many folks, including the residents of Eagle Point, Medford, Jacksonville, Central Point and Phoenix who drink Rogue River water in the summer. The water is collected and treated about a mile away from the mouth of Little Butte Creek, said Bob Jones, geologist with the Medford Water Commission. The north fork of Little Butte Creek originates at Fish Lake, while the south fork has its headwaters near Howard Prairie. They join above Lake Creek, flow along the Brownsboro Highway and through downtown Eagle Point before reaching the Rogue 20 miles later, Jones said. The South Fork of Little Butte Creek is one of the best spawning grounds for coho salmon in the Rogue Basin, Jones said. Yet it�s on DEQ�s list of troubled creeks because high average temperatures threaten fish survival. Summer temperatures at Little Butte�s mouth, for example, sometimes reach 80 degrees, much hotter than the 64 degree limit. "If the water is not good for fish, it�s not good for us," Anthony said. "It all fits together. Water is what makes this whole planet work." But is it a case of the fox guarding the henhouse when the test-takers are also creek dwellers? No, said Prior, because the program is not designed to have the volunteers enforcing environmental rules. "We don�t attempt to use the watershed council and their efforts to identify the major problems," Prior said. "We�re really interested in keeping the credibility of the property owners. We don�t want them to think every problem is going to be reported to the DEQ." As for the sheep rancher-turned-chemist, he�s already creating his own solutions. Grimm put up a fence to keep livestock out of the creek, switched from flood to sprinkler irrigation (saving more than 4 million gallons of creek water annually) and planted trees along the creek banks to create shade and cooler temperatures for the fish. "When you move to a place like this, you need to be responsible," he says. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA