In our last issue we wrote about the problem of water pollution in the Moorlands, as well as in the rest of the UK, and also about how we can participate as citizen scientists, in helping to monitor water quality in our own localities.
We encouraged our supporters to take part in the Great UK Water Blitz, which runs entry-level monitoring sessions twice a year, in April and September. This April, we and other community groups in the Moorlands registered with the organisers, received our testing kits and sallied forth to key stretches of water that we thought were worth monitoring. We aimed as much as possible to avoid duplicating the efforts of others but also to see if we could detect different levels of pollution at different stretches of the same river (for example above and below sewage outflows and the like).
Our results and those of others can be seen in the map above. The green pins represent good water quality, amber moderate quality and red poor quality. For full details and the results of the nitrate and phosphate tests, you can go to the interactive map of the Water Blitz’s results page and click on the pin for each location. You can also download and read the full report, which shows how our area performs compared to others.
We’ve been asked to return in September to the same locations, so that they can be monitored consistently over a period of time. Let us know if you would like to join us via