Getting hands wet to keep an eye on quality
Grace Chua, Straits Times 25 Mar 10;
HERE in Singapore, where water that gushes out of the tap is drinkable right away, it is easy to take it for granted.
But schools and community groups have taken steps to become more conscious of the state of raw, unprocessed water here by getting their hands wet - they go outdoors to collect water samples from urban canals, streams and rivers for testing.
For the school groups, water testing is a hands-on activity, a science or geography lesson taken outdoors.
For civic organisations like Waterways Watch Society (WWS), monitoring water quality dovetails with the group's aim to educate the public on keeping the waterways clean.
In the last year, WWS has offered to teach water testing to schools and corporate groups, alongside its regular waterway cleanups and workshops, and has drawn the interest of 15 schools.
Singapore Polytechnic lecturer Kwok Chen-Ko, 36, who started out teaching his own chemical and life sciences students water-monitoring techniques, also runs classes for school groups.
So far, seven primary and secondary schools and junior colleges and 30 teachers have picked up from him the basics of measuring water properties such as acidity and water clarity.
The schools are buoyed by the fact that they do not need to have sophisticated equipment to do it, he said.
They are also driven by the growing recognition that simply picking up trash and cleaning up river banks are not enough to keep water quality high.
Some schools have taken water-quality monitoring a step further: In May, a Fairfield Methodist Secondary School group will use their water-testing skills during a trip to Cambodia, where they have a long-term project to develop simple water-purification solutions for villagers.
Singapore Chinese Girls' School, on the other hand, has a water-related project at home - tracking the water quality in a section of the Dunearn Road canal nearest their school.
With help from national water agency PUB, Singapore Polytechnic and WWS, they will collect data on:
# Amount of dissolved oxygen, vital to sustaining aquatic life;
# Turbidity, a measure of sediments and solids indicative of pollution; and
# Acidity or pH level, an indicator of how acidic rain in the area is.
WWS, which looks after the Singapore River and the Kallang Basin, has been testing water annually for five years, in partnership with the Environmental Engineering Society of Singapore and PUB; it ramped this up to weekly sessions last year.
WWS chairman Eugene Heng, 60, said monitoring water quality gives the society a heads-up on how well its message against water pollution is getting through to the public.
The water-testing movement here is still young, he noted, lamenting: 'I guess people will understand the value of something like water only when they do not have easy, cheap access to it.'
Singapore Polytechnic's Mr Kwok noted in his blog Water Quality in Singapore (waterqualityinsingapore.blogspot.com) that more national attention - and public funds - is now flowing into waste-water treatment than into water-quality monitoring.
He believes monitoring water quality to be as important as treating water or recycling waste water in ensuring a supply of clean water for the country, and deserves as much research into finding better monitoring techniques.
PUB and the National Environment Agency have their own water-quality monitoring schemes, but neither involves volunteers or students in these testing programmes.
Community groups pushing for more people to take ownership of water quality here hope to change this.
In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has a nationwide volunteer monitoring programme, and gives instructions to those willing to do water testing. Mr Kwok said he hoped the agencies here would spearhead a community-based water-monitoring scheme.
And WWS hopes to collect more stringent data over time for PUB, so that the recommendations it makes will be backed by data.
Mr Heng said: 'We're still at a learning stage, as our members are ordinary working people, students and retirees.'
All hot and sweaty over water
Straits Times 25 Mar 10;
FIFTEEN Secondary 3 students of Fairfield Methodist Secondary learnt recently that a water-testing field trip could be a hot, sweaty business.
The group, led by Singapore Polytechnic lecturer Kwok Chen-Ko, 36, and their chemistry teacher Tan Lijun, 24, tested the waters of a canal at four points along its course.
The waterway near Ngee Ann Polytechnic runs perpendicular to Clementi Road, wending through thick secondary forest behind King Albert Park and a canal in the Old Holland Road area.
The students had to measure the amount of dissolved oxygen, the turbidity, the pH level and the air and water temperatures. They also had to survey the scene for fish, insects, plants and algae.
The teenagers found themselves having to jump across small drains and climb down a flight of steps to get into a shallow concrete-lined canal. One girl asked upon reaching the canal: 'We're supposed to go down to collect samples?' Ms Tan retorted: 'What, you expect the water to come to you?'
After 2-1/2 hours, the bedraggled lot emerged at Old Holland Road. Over the next month, they will have six more sessions of classroom lectures, laboratory work and fieldwork - to prepare them for an eight-day trip to Cambodia in May. There, they will test the water at a village near Siem Reap. With the sponsorship of the Rotary Club, future batches of students will design and implement sand-filtration systems which will clean the water for villagers.
GRACE CHUA
More links
Kwok Chen-Ko blogs at Water Quality in Singapore
