College Brook Pollution Events

This Pollution Events page will attempt to document any event that might cause concern about the health of College Brook. There were regular occurrences in the past with the incinerator on campus and the dumping of waste into the stream. These have been stopped and hopefully only very rare events will be recorded here.

October 26, 2000
A water main broke at the construction site of the new Environmental & Technology Building, spilling out large amounts of clay material beneath the site. The very cloudy water made its way to College Brook and soon the stream was totally filled with sediment the entire length below it. The total suspended sediment load was 139.0 mg/L at CB4, while the average TSS at that site for this year has been 4.8 mg/L!

June 28, 2001
Sediment from the construction of the new track at UNH entered College Brook and TSS at CB2 was four times it's normal level. Also, iron from groundwater contaminated CB0 and caused the TSS to be four times normal levels , due to the flocculate, and the dissolved oxygen to be lower than detectable levels.