After 30 years, the United States Geological Survey is re-establishing a streamgage on the Cullasaja River in Macon County.

A year ago, representatives from all Macon County watershed organizations met with the USGS to discuss the possibility of re-establishing the gage. The installation of the gage represents a capital investment of $20,000 plus an annual budget of $12,000 for maintenance and calibration. The funding was a cooperative effort between the Upper Cullasaja Watershed Association (UCWA) and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

According to UCWA, “With the new USGS streamgage in the Cullasaja River, accurate measurements will soon be available again and within six months to a year of new data, UCWA studies will be able to re-evaluate the trends by bridging across 30 years of missing data.”

The gage was installed July 10 near the Turtle Pond Road bridge. It will log river data every 15 minutes and a transmitter will relay the previous eight hours of data to the USGS office in Raleigh every four hours. Data will be available to all interested residents via the Internet, at http://nc.water.usgs.gov, and will be used by watershed organizations to support water resources planning and management studies.

With real-time streamflow data, UCWA and other watershed groups will be able to improve their public education initiatives with scientific information gathered directly from the Cullasaja River.

 

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The Smoky Mountain News