The Coldbrook Creek Community and the Center for Sustainability and Department of Chemistry and Physics at Aquinas College are working to grow a partnership around the stewardship of Coldbrook Creek. Part of this stewardship is the development of the River Narrative project at Aquinas.

The river has a story to tell. We are working to give it a voice. To this end, we are beginning development of a network of sensors to monitor stream health and communicate information- from real-time acquired physicochemical data to histories and images of the stream. In the summer of 2022, Nick Hegenauer worked with me on the initial development of ion-selective electrodes to monitor metal concentrations in the water. This spring, Beau Craig is laying the computer groundwork (database and networking) to bring sensors online. And this coming summer, Ella Satterthwaite will be working on sensors and getting the sensors in the stream to communicate and bringing the data online. Both Nick and Ella were/will be funded by the Mohler-Thompson program at Aquinas; Beau is funded by the Economicology Leadership Fund through the Center for Sustainability at Aquinas College.