September 2022 – Year End Meeting — Protecting Your Local Waters
For the first time since Covid, the Roe Jan Watershed Community is getting together in-person. On Saturday October 1st at 10am, we are going to have a members meeting at the clubhouse at Robinson Pond (53 Lakeshore Drive, Copake). More Information. Also, please RSVP.
June 2022 – 2022 sampling is underway, and a crew of volunteers has been assembled to cover all the dates, but if you are interested in sampling, get in touch and you could be contacted next year, or if someone drops out this year. Spring 2022 Newsletter. May 2022 Newsletter.
November 2021 – Sampling is done for the year and the results are in. You can read about it in our latest post, hear about the year in a 4-minute video, or get all the details in an informative summary by Emily White, PhD, of Bard College.
And November is also the time of year when we pay the lab at Bard College for the cost of our sampling. We’ve just written a big (for us) check for 2021 costs, why don’t you give us just a little to help out. A donation of just $40 will pay for three months of sampling at one of our sites.
April 2021 Newsletter – click here. May 2021 Newsletter – click here. We’re looking for volunteers for sampling. We need two samplers for each date, for each half of the stream, and they must be members of the same household (pod). All dates are Saturdays, and sampling takes most of the morning: May 15th, June 12th, July 10th, Aug 14th, Sept 11th, Oct 9th. Write to kaare@roejanwatershed.org if you would like to sample.
February 2021 Newsletter – click here. Trying to find sites for Trees for Tribs program.
July 2020 Update – Sampling has resumed with COVID protocols in place. Sampling must be done by pairs of volunteers belonging to the same household, they must be experienced samplers, and they must follow the new safety protocols developed by the Bard Water Lab.
May 7 2020 Update – Letter to members with more info on working towards resuming sampling.
April 2020 COVID Update – Letter to members, due to the ongoing pandemic the sampling program and all meetings are suspended.
Welcome to the online home of the Roe Jan Watershed Community. We’re here to monitor and enhance the Roeliff Jansen Kill, an important tributary of the Hudson River, mostly in southern Columbia county. The Roe Jan flows through the Columbia County towns of Hillsdale, Copake, Ancram, Gallatin, Clermont, Livingston, and Germantown, and one of the Roe Jan’s larger tribs flows through Pine Plains in Dutchess County.
The Roe Jan Watershed Community started as a citizen-science project to sample the Roe Jan, so we would have a better idea of its condition. Using Riverkeeper for guidance, and the Bard Water lab for assistance and testing, and with strong support from the Columbia Greene chapter of Trout Unlimited, the first sampling was in May of 2016 and continued monthly for five more months. In 2016 we sampled fourteen sites along the 50+ mile length of the Roe Jan, from north of Hillsdale all the way to the mouth of the Roe Jan, in between Germantown and Livingston, including 3 sites on the banks of the Hudson. In 2017 we added several new sites, and initiated Student Sampling Day in May.
If you care about the environment in southern Columbia County (NY), please use the “Get Involved” link at the top of this page to let us know.
The Roe Jan Watershed Community is a New York State not-for-profit corporation and was granted 501(C)(3) status in October of 2019.