NEWPORT, R.I. — Student researchers at Salve Regina University are trying to tackle persistent water quality issues at Almy Pond by exploring the waterbody from a new vantage point, a little less than 5 miles down the road.

Kelly Schafer and Colleen Brown have been testing Almy Pond in Newport and its healthier counterpart, Nelson Pond in Middletown, in an attempt to understand how the former could become more like the latter.

To the chagrin of many, Almy Pond consistently tests high for contaminants such as nitrates, phosphates, and E. coli. High test results and algal blooms frequently lead to no-contact orders. The pond also drains into Bailey’s Beach and Rejects Beach, causing contamination problems there in the summer.

Nelson Pond, on the other hand, is relatively healthy.

The problems at Almy Pond aren’t new, but Schafer and Brown hope showing the differences between the healthy and unhealthy environments could bring more attention to the issue and help decision-makers parse ways to solve it.

“Because there’s been so much research about it,” Schafer said, “we wanted to do it through a more digestible lens.”

The pair decided to compare Almy Pond to Nelson Pond because the two bodies are similar in several respects: they’re both estuaries — places where fresh and salt water meet — and both flow into popular beaches.

Although Almy Pond is in a more densely populated area, Nelson Pond, which sits next to the Norman Bird Sanctuary, is still relatively close to residential areas.

For their research, the students are testing the levels of E. coli, phosphates, nitrates, and dissolved oxygen in the water. E. coli usually indicates the presence of human waste, often from septic or sewer issues. Brown, a junior studying biology, said nitrates and phosphates usually come from synthetic sources such as fertilizers, which make their way into waterbodies via runoff.

Unlike the other metrics, high dissolved oxygen levels are a good sign, Brown explained, but Almy Pond has relatively low dissolved oxygen levels.

“At Almy Pond, they don’t have much oxygen, they can’t really have a lot of animals there. And if there’s no animals living there, no there’s no prey, there’s no predators,” she said, “and it’s just kind of a dying ecosystem.”

One difference Schafer and Brown hope to zero in on is the vegetation that grows around Nelson Pond, its higher dissolved oxygen environment, and whether it could offer positive environmental impacts if introduced to Almy Pond.

They would also like to examine the biochar wall that was installed in Almy Pond in 2021 but didn’t absorb nutrients and reduce contaminant levels as expected, Brown said. They want to test the wall, essentially a sock filled with charcoal, to see what might have happened.

So far, in the colder months, their research has been focused on honing their testing methods and preparing for the summer, when higher temperatures and an influx of seasonal visitors and residents, among other factors, will likely yield more significant test results.

Schafer and Brown plan to continue their testing and gather more data on the ponds into the next academic year. They are presenting some of their initial findings at a New England Estuarine Research Society conference scheduled for later this month, where they will get feedback on what they’ve done so far.

Schafer said she’s been happy for the opportunity to “make our research mean something outside of just having numbers in a lab.”

“We just want to be able to ensure that Almy Pond can be on a healthy upward trend,” Brown added.