Just about everyone remembers seeing a gas can, or some household cleaner bottles floating in the river during last year's flood. So, we decided to find out exactly what's in the river one year later.

The Department of Natural Resources helped us look for any chemicals that may still linger one year later. We started at the Cedar River and tested for everything ranging from pesticides to gasoline.

"Some of the sediments around Cedar Rapids in the flood areas may have some of those chemicals...things like gasoline and oils left behind, but we haven't really seen those showing up in the river,” DNR Stream Monitoring Coordinator Mary Skopec said.

Then, we moved on to the Iowa River to perform the same tests. "Every river has a different personality,” Skopec said. The Iowa River had lots of foam clumps, but the DNR says that's natural and normal. "It's safe. It's ok. If it were bright white, we would be concerned about detergents or something else like that getting into the river,” Skopec said.

Next, we headed over to the Coralville Reservoir...a popular place for people to swim. "The reservoir acts like a big sink. It holds back a lot of the things that normally would be coming through the Iowa City area,” Skopec said.

The DNR tests the beach area here, and all state run beaches, twice a week during the swimming season. "Bacteria levels can change very rapidly within even a couple of hours. So, we are a little more vigilant at our beach areas,” Skopec said.

Three different labs helped us process the test results. Scientists used high-tech equipment to scan the water for about seventy different chemicals. "The color of the water is not really an indicator of what chemicals may be present,” John Vargo from the Hygienic Lab said.

In Iowa, the DNR says it's not unusual to find pesticides swirling around in river water. "This really is a seasonal type of event. It coincides with the farming season...when the farmers are out tilling their fields and applying the pesticides,” Vargo said.

At this moment, the results showed the Cedar River had five times as much E. coli bacteria as the Iowa River. The total amount found in the Cedar is slightly more than the standard accepted level, but the DNR says people should not worry. “In terms of chemical issues, I think it's fairly safe. Again, we want the Nitrogen levels to decrease for drinking water, but it's not a simple...'It's safe, it's not safe answer.' Rivers are very dynamic. Every week is a little bit different,” Skopec said.

Other than the E. coli, all three places we tested did not have any alarming amounts of chemicals. "Most of what we saw in the water quality was moving downstream. We're not really seeing lingering effects of the actual flood,” Skopec said.

In fact, the DNR says the chances of any chemicals surviving in the river are slim. "The sunlight, the heat, the bugs and the sediments will eat up those chemicals. So, it isn't really a lingering problem for us at this point,” Skopec said.

So, even though thousands of chemicals seeped into the water during last year's flood, most have now floated down to the Mississippi River and out of our area.

The DNR tells TV9 that even at the height of the flood, the chemical levels were not that high simply because so much water was rushing through.

Graph About Chemical Levels in Cedar River: (Click Here to Download the MS Word Document)

List of Chemicals Tested For & Amount Found: (Click Here to Download the Microsoft Excel Document)

If you're having trouble downloading these types of documents, Click here.

E-mail Mark Geary at Mark.Geary@kcrg.com or follow him on Twitter.