ENVIRONMENT: Time to Watch That Water

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Oct 17 2003 (IPS) - A simple kit used in several countries around the world will give people information from this Saturday about the state of natural water around them.

Thousands of citizens in 12 countries have been using the kit since Sep. 18 to test water in coastal waters, rivers and lakes around them in what is being billed as the first ever global evaluation of the health of the world’s water.

The testing is being conducted by the independent London-based International Water Association (IWA) and America’s Clean Water Foundation (ACWF).

Water monitoring groups, schoolchildren and others have been carrying out tests and logging their test results on to a global website. The data is expected to be put together Oct. 18, which has been dubbed the World Water Monitoring Day.

The World Water Monitoring Day will be observed in Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Gabon, Portugal, Israel and New Zealand.

Most of this testing is being carried out in developed countries. "We wanted to use established networks because this is the first year of the testing," Andrew Speers, coordinator for the event for the London-based International Water Association told IPS.

"There was only a limited time available to organise it this year," Speers said. But next year the testing will be carried out in 30 countries. The IWA, an independent water monitoring group hopes eventually to take this experiment around the world. The event is being organised along with America’s Clean Water Foundation (ACWF).

The testing can be carried out by a simple kit that can be ordered off the website www.worldwatermonitoringday.org for about 20 dollars. The kit is good enough for several dozen experiments, Speers says.

The kit will test water for the degree of dissolved oxygen, relative acidity or alkalinity, turbidity and temperature. This can be an important factor if it varies significantly from temperatures that would normally be expected. The results are expected to give a broad indication of the status of water quality at a location at a particular time.

"But this is not really about getting reports about the quality of rivers around the world, but about educating and empowering local communities," Speers says. "It cannot compete with monitoring by usual regulatory authorities."

The real value of the move lies in giving people information directly. "If they find that the quality is outside acceptable ranges, they can go to the local authorities with their complaints," Speers says. "So it is about empowering people, not just getting a comprehensive view of the state of water around the world."

In one instance, he said, local people in an area around Sydney had found the quality of water badly degraded. They took the matter to local authorities and to business upstream. "They talked to them about good housekeeping practices, and as a result the water quality improved," he said.

The kit being offered does not test health pollutants, Speers says. But the information provided can be of critical importance for the environment.

"In time, World Water Monitoring Day can become as important as World Environment Day as a way for citizens to get involved," says Michael Rouse, president of the International Water Association and former head of the British government’s Drinking Water Inspectorate. "We’re already working on plans next year to involve local authorities, businesses and schools in the UK and many other countries."

In Britain, GLOBE, an environmental education programme using the Internet, has distributed water kits, along with posters and information packs to 370 schools around the country as part of the science curriculum, the IWA says.

"World Water Monitoring Day is a great way for everyone to enjoy taking part in an activity that makes a difference to individuals and their local community. The kit is easy to use and it takes only minutes to get useful results," says Suzanne Welch, Project Co-ordinator for GLOBE-UK.