Thermal water tested for long-term trends
For around five years, Hot Springs National Park employees and volunteers have been opening up the large green concrete boxes that protect the city’s namesake hot springs on the side of Hot Springs Mountain and tracking changes to the water.
They include Kelly Sokolosky, a former hydrologic technician for the park, who has looked at 35 of the park’s springs weekly.
Sokolosky, whose last day on the job was Friday, uses a sonde, which measures temperature, pH level and conductivity of the water, and a peristaltic pump, which can bring the water up from the spring and into a bucket without the water ever touching the pump. The water stays inside a specific tube the entire time, so it is not contaminated.
Each of the 35 springs tested is different from one another. In order to not contaminate water from one spring with water from another, Sokolosky said each spring is assigned its own tube for the pumping process.
As she worked on one spring, Sokolosky pointed to a nearby spring and said that despite being located feet from each other, the two “have different temperatures and slightly different pH.”
Also, while it isn’t part of her study, Sokolosky said the springs have “thermophilic bacteria (which is) not harmful to humans.”
“Every spring has unique bacteria,” she said, noting they believe the species of bacteria found in the springs are unique to Hot Springs National Park. The peristaltic pump also helps keep the bacteria from being moved from one spring to another.
Sokolosky said the reason the park conducts the tests is to be able to see long-term trends in the springs. “Are they heating up? Are they cooling off? If there are changes happening, we want to know why,” Sokolosky said. “Big picture, how are they changing over time?”
The springs are the “reason we are here … it’s our duty to protect these springs and
what lives in them,” she said.
As the testing is still relatively recent, Sokolosky said they can’t really see anything from the data yet. “Five years sounds like a lot,” she said, but with this amount of data, they can only “see some short-term trends. Big changes over time need more data.”
Five days a week, Sokolosky and other park workers or volunteers averaged around seven springs a day. She said the job requires at least two people per spring, both for sanitary reasons, and because the lids covering the springs weigh around 60 pounds. To keep the springs clean, one person is designated as “clean hands,” and the other is “dirty hands.”
“Hardest part of the job is (moving) heavy lids,” Sokolosky said.
In addition to the work being for science, spring testing is also frequently used as a teaching tool.
“Almost every day, especially in summer, people walk up,” she said. From start to finish, it takes around 20 minutes to test a spring with half the time spent waiting for the equipment to be ready, so they have time to talk to tourists and locals who approach.
Most of the springs are located underneath the green boxes. Sokolosky said people will often come up and watch her work. “They will say ‘I’ve wondered for years what those are,’” she said. “Really good tool.”
Sokolosky said that even though she is not testing how safe the water is, that doesn’t mean the park isn’t doing that. She said the water filling stations around town test the water before people can take samples of it.
While Sokolosky is leaving Hot Springs for Tulsa this week, she said a new hydrologic technician will be hired by the park to replace her.