By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer
Volunteers are studying Royal River tributary to see how its water quality has been affected.

AUBURN – Nate Reimensnyder couldn’t help himself.

Looking over a ditch between Washington Street and the Irving Mainway parking lot, Reimensnyder just had to clean it up a little. A volunteer with the Youth Conservation Corps, his job Monday was to observe and report the condition of Moose Brook. Strictly hands off.

The shoulder of the ditch wasn’t bad, as far as gas station parking lots go. Developers had taken care to keep most of the parking lot runoff from fouling the tiny brook’s watershed. But the side was still lined with truck-stop refuse – bottles, cans, food wrappers and rusted bits of metal.

He knelt to pick up a rusted rivet gun by the side of the road.

“No, Nate, we’re not here to repair it,” said teammate Mary Cloutier.

Repairing it is the next step, a couple of years down the road, according to team leader Zach Henderson. He led a group of eight volunteers Monday as they wandered the Moose Brook watershed to see how its surroundings affect its water quality.

Moose Brook begins somewhere north of Interstate 95’s Auburn cloverleaf. It stubbornly winds its way through southern Auburn, past gas stations and busy roads, industrial lands and RV parks. It’s never a cascade. It’s a 20-foot-wide channel at its widest and runs up to 5 feet deep during the wettest times.

It collects runoff throughout southern Auburn and part of Poland, eventually dumping its haul in the Royal River, which empties into Casco Bay.

“That’s what we’re looking for today – what’s going to eventually make it into the Casco Bay,” Henderson said.

It’s far from pristine, according to quality studies. Tests in 1996 gave it a failing grade for not having enough dissolved oxygen. It failed two-thirds of the time for E. coli bacteria contamination.

Henderson’s group spent Monday trying to figure out why. They looked for ways development might contaminate the brook. The watershed is already 6 percent developed, covered with hard materials such as asphalt and concrete. Trash left along the side of the road, spilled motor oil and gasoline can roll off those hard surfaces, winding up in the brook.

There’s going to be more development. Much of the watershed is zoned for industrial use or commercial uses, and Henderson said he expects to see much more asphalt in the area.

“When we get to 10 percent coverage, that’s when we start to see big problems with watersheds,” he said.

The solution isn’t to stop development but to do it wisely. Henderson gave high marks to the developers of the Irving Mainway for collecting their runoff in a pond south of the building.

“Some of it’s easy stuff, like keeping dumpsters covered,” he said. Other solutions might be tougher and involve redeveloping a site.

A second team will go back in the fall to look more closely at questionable parts of the watershed, Henderson said. He expects to issue a report next spring.

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