The effort is both a means of getting a picture of conditions around the river and, perhaps more so, getting participants to make a hands-on connection to the river and its watershed by testing for several variables at 48 different spots.

"It gets the people out there, to connect with the watershed they live in," Riverkeeper Diana Muller told about 60 people gathered in the sweltering gym at Edgewater Elementary School Tuesday night. "There are some out there who say, 'Oh, I live in a watershed?' This gets people engaged."

The main thrust of the snapshot was the results for the primary pollutants - nitrogen, phosphorous and enterococci, or animal bacteria.

Seven of the stations measured well above the Maryland threshold for nitrogen pollution of 0.6 milligrams per liter.

One site stood alone in the top nitrogen pollution category, more than twice the state standard: the top of the much-sullied Church Creek, where more than 60 percent of the watershed is impervious surface, the hardened parking lots, streets and rooftops that contribute to stormwater runoff and the pollution it carries.

Annapolis Towne Centre, Annapolis Harbour Center, Forest Plaza, Route 2, Aris T. Allen Parkway and other nearby areas all flush into Church Creek.

"We have to save Church Creek; it's critical, it needs to be fixed," said Muller, who was testing dissolved oxygen levels at various spots in the upper reaches of the creek Wednesday with several assistants.

The creek's watershed also was the site of the two worst phosphorous readings taken in the snapshot.

Eight sites were considered in degraded condition for phosphorous, which helps trigger algal blooms in the water. Algal blooms deteriorate and consume even more available oxygen in the water.

There are efforts afoot to both preserve some of the land in the upper reaches of the creek and secure grant funding for stream restoration projects to decrease runoff entering Church Creek, the South River and the Chesapeake Bay.

One of the most successful stream restorations installed in the bay watershed is the Wilelinor stream project on one of the creek's tributaries. Testing there revealed its system reduced nitrogen and phosphorous levels by the amount set in the baywide 2015 interstate goals.

The readings for the enterococci bacteria were pretty good overall. Only five spots tallied in the troublesome categories, with nearly half the test sites reading in the best possible category.

One bacterial trouble spot, which has shown up as such on all previous snapshots, is the site of a soon-to-be installed retrofit and cleanup.

Other testing involved dissolved oxygen, water clarity and a visual measure of the general conditions at each site.

Muller is not convinced the dissolved oxygen and clarity, or turbidity, measured were exact enough to include in the growing set of data for the river.

But she noticed there were higher turbidity readings across the watershed. "With all the precipitation we have had, especially over the winter, it is not surprising," she said.

The snapshot turned up overall higher dissolved oxygen readings, too.

"But I am not sure about those. That's why I am back out on Church Creek ... taking my own series of readings with a calibrated device," she said.

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