Blue Team Blog Series; Entry Four: Fernando Chavez

Blue Team member Fernando Chavez collecting a water sample from the Bear Creek in Sheridan

This program has been a trip so far since the first day. It started when a teacher told me about this job and I got interested in it. I got accepted into the program and then started working. The first day I was nervous but then we got to know each other well so we can work as a team. The first week we were being introduced to the Bear Creek watershed and vocabulary associated with the watershed we needed to know to be in this job. They also taught us the basic ways of how to sample water to introduce us to the real water sampling. The first week for me was very slow, but as the team got to know each other better the weeks started to go by fast. Our first sampling day was fun. We went across the Bear Creek and took samples. We were checking for many things but our main focus was E.coli. After the first sampling day we went to the EPA lab to hand off our water samples. Weeks passed by and we went to visit many places. We went to the South Platte Park & Carson Nature Center, EPA lab, and rode the Bear Creek trail and South Platte trail a couple of times. Many sampling days passed by fast too, we could see our progress get better every sampling day. These weeks have been a trip and I can remember my first week thinking “This program is going to last forever” and now we are almost at our last week of the program.