00;00;01;05 - 00;00;14;07 Adele Reich (All right.) Every day, Shelby Browning and Brandon Holsinger from the Muncie Bureau of Water Quality go out to different sections of the river to check the levels and quality of the water. But something is different about the river this year, that director Rick Conrad, is well aware of. 00;00;14;08 - 00;00;23;04 Rick Conrad Right now we are seeing a discharge of about 3.5 million gallons per day, which is incredibly low. 00;00;23;06 - 00;00;37;07 Adele Reich In fact, it hasn’t been this low since 1991. The United States Geological Survey, or USGS, report that the average streamflow for the river is 25 to 50 gallons, not nearly where the White River was in October. USGS hydrologist Jeff Woods says one thing is to. 00;00;37;07 - 00;00;41;04 Jeff Woods Blame the extended period of low rainfall, really. 00;00;41;05 - 00;00;53;05 Adele Reich USGS data shows that for October, the rivers gauge height has never come high above four feet. Compare this to last year's data, the lowest was at 4.24ft and the highest was 9.49ft. Wood says this is part of a bigger issue. 00;00;53;05 - 00;00;58;23 Jeff Woods Certainly we're in kind of a minor to moderate drought situation in general in this part of Indiana. 00;00;58;25 - 00;01;00;28 Adele Reich But what happens to the river when it gets this low? 00;01;01;03 - 00;01;20;06 Rick Conrad One of our biggest concerns when the river gets low is what would happen if we have a combined sewer overflow during a rain event will allow untreated sewage and a mix of rainwater to be discharged to the river. Even a small discharge could be a pretty significant volume in comparison to what's in the river for now. 00;01;20;07 - 00;01;23;29 Adele Reich Conrad and Woods agree that the river is fine, but one thing will help it recover. 00;01;24;00 - 00;01;38;12 Jeff Woods Yeah. Any type of precipitation. Rivers typically take a little bit longer to respond. When there's drier conditions like this. Typically, once we start rolling into the winter, it's a period of much higher precipitation, and these cold conditions go away. 00;01;38;14 - 00;01;53;15 Adele Reich If winter brings higher precipitation, the first ones to know about it will be Shelby Browning and Brandon Holsinger stopping traffic and watching over the White River. Hopefully the weather starts to cooperate a little bit and gives us a little bit more flow. Adele Reich for IPR news.