BOISE RIVER: SOURCE TO SNAKE - FRONT LINE

RIVER EXPEDITION: AUGUST 6 - SEPTEMBER 7, 2019

THE RESULTS ARE IN…

On August 8, Christopher Swain swam the length of Redfish Lake, trailed by a boat full of citizen scientists. The water in the 4.5-mile-long pool in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains was so clean it glowed, diaphanous curtains of minerals catching the light the way the sunlight streaks through deep ocean. “If you watch somebody unfurl a bolt of silk in slow motion,” he said, “it’s those colors.”

The Boise River tells the stories of so many rivers in the West. It turns the turbines of hydroelectric dams, powering homes and businesses. It yields sport for catch-and-release anglers and food for catch-and-keep fishers. It pools in reservoirs where boaters gather and ferries people floating on inner tubes through the heart of Idaho’s capital. It is the source of 30 percent of Boise’s drinking water.

 ALL OF THESE THINGS AFFECT THE RIVER’S WATER; WE MUST LEARN HOW AND WHERE TO SUSTAIN A SWIMMABLE, FISHABLE, DRINKABLE BOISE RIVER

Accompanied by Team STREAM, Swain set out on a journey to unite water users from every portion of the Boise River and create a multi-generational legacy of community activists who rely on the river and see the benefits of sustaining clean water. To meet these goals, Team STREAM and Swain collected water quality data at 15 different locations along their journey, beginning in the Sawtooth Wilderness area at Redfish Lake and ending at the rivers confluence with the Snake in Parma.

As we continue to process this data into a finalized report, we will be releasing snapshots of our findings here. We hope that this data will supplement the hard work of many water quality advocates across Idaho and the nation, like USGS, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, and the Lower Boise Watershed Council.