Your Stories 2010
Bulgaria
On World Water Day and until the end of the month, students in Yambol will test the water in the river Tundja in an action called “Students for a Cleaner River Tundja”. The Tundja surrounds the city of Yambol on three sides and many of 
the city’s schools are located directly on the riverbank. Organized by the community foundation “Bridges Over Tundja”,
this action includes students from 3 local schools. Participants will include 6th graders from the “Pierre du Coubertin” Sports School, 7th graders from “Atanas Radev” Mathematics Gymnasium, and 6th and 9th grade students from the Foreign Language School “Vasil Karagyozov”. Accompanied by their homeroom and biology teachers the students from each school will visit the river nearest them to test the water temperature, turbidity, pH levels, and oxygen levels of our river.
Water testing kits have been generously donated by the NGO “World Water Monitoring Day”, and each school will be given 2 kits containing enough chemicals for 100 tests. The three water monitoring sites will reveal much about how different uses of the river affect the water quality. The student’s water test results will be uploaded to the WWMD website, where the information will be combined with information from all over the world to gain a clearer picture of global water quality.
On March 22nd, students from the “Pierre du Coubertin” Sports School and the “Atanas Radev” Mathematics Gymnasium tested the water from the river near their schools. The weather was warm, the sun was out, and the fisherman looked on with amusement. Students from the Sports School proudly displayed their Water Monitoring Day stickersWhen the students from the Maths School were asked at the end of their testing how they thought the water quality was in the river, they replied “Terrible!” and then after a few laughs from the group one girl said, “No, really it’s not that bad.”
Pakistan
On World Water Day March 22, 2010 where world is participating globally with a message “clean water for a healthy world” Mr. Rangeen Khan along with his friends carried out a program to monitor a site and contribute their effort for water with the support of World Water Monitoring Day, who donated water kits, and Social Mobilization Unit Swabi.
Water is essential for all socio-economic development and for maintaining healthy ecosystems. As population increases and development calls for increased allocations of groundwater and surface water for the domestic, agriculture and industrial sectors, the pressure on water resources intensifies, leading to tensions, conflicts among users, and excessive pressure on the environment.
By 2025, 1 800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions.
Addressing water scarcity requires actions at local, national and international levels, leading to increased collaboration between nations on shared management of water resources. Access to clean drinking water is critical for the health of children around the world. An estimated 425 million children under the age of 18 continue to face water shortages. Women and girls are often tasked with fetching water, putting extra pressure on their well being.
The situation found as it is discussed in “Nogram”, is a small village round about one thousand household of District Buneer having a distance of 40 km to North from Swabi. Local students of Nogram guided team members to a spring from where a depressive community fetching water for their daily use very hardly using Donkey and other animals. The purpose of the program was to attract attention of the Nogram community to their local water resource problems, to involve them in the water resources protection process, and to train them in the simplest methods of measuring water quality's main indicators.
The weather was clear and without clouds in Nogram. Water was collected in a jar and the result showed that air temperature was 32° C, water temperature was 28°C, turbidity was 100 JTU, DO was 4 PPM and pH was 7 recorded.
More than 100 participants from local community participated on the occasion.
United States
California
In the fall of 2009, Glenn County RCD planner Claudia Street and local rancher/RCD associate director Kathy Landini came to Mrs. Egly’s fourth grade classroom at Murdock Elementary School in Willows, California, and talked about the importance of having good, clean water as a natural resource. The students had previously learned about how to improve water quality through a RSD demonstration at Farm Day. The students were very excited to have their own Water Monitoring Kit.
On March 17th, Natalie Wolder and Kevin Kibby from the Bureau of Reclamation came to each of Murdock School’s fourth grade classrooms and pre-taught water measuring vocabulary and concepts. Students learned about the equipment used to measure water depth and velocity in a creek as well as the importance of multiplication in determining the water flow.
On March 19th, all of Murdock’s 128 fourth grade students went to Vogt Ranches’ Three Creeks Ranch southwest of Elk Creek for a day of science learning and nature exploration. This site was chosen because of Mr. Vogt’s generosity in spending his 2009 Leopold Conservation monetary award to fund and cover all expenses for a science field trip for Murdock’s fourth graders. With the help of BOR staffers Mrs. Wolder and RJ Salvagno, students were able to actually measure the depth and velocity of Clover Creek and calculate the flow of the creek by taking a single sample for the entire group. Using the Water Monitoring kit, they were able to measure the temperature, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, and pH of the water from Clover Creek. At another station, students were able to explore the creek itself and capture and identify the diversity and numbers of invertebrates in the creek to get an idea of the health of the creek and its inhabitants on this beautiful, clear spring day.
Staff and students plan to use the Water Monitoring kit again on May 6th at the Landini Family’s Divide Ranch in Fruto and on May 12th at the Mudd Ranch in Clark’s Valley.
The most striking and amazing thing noticed was the color of the “clear” water when doing the different turbidity and DO tests. It really opened the students’ “eyes” to degrees of visual and mental perception.
Virginia
On Saturday, March 20, 2010, Girl Scout Troops # 544, #124 and #4444 of Virginia Skyline Council participated in Lynchburg Parks & Recreation Department sponsored “March Makeover” event, held at Peaks View Park in Lynchburg, VA. Lynchburg Parks & Recreation’s Naturalist Kathie Driscoll and Robert E. Lee Soil and Water Agent, Garrett Jones facilitated the event as part of World Water Monitoring Day.
Peaks View Park is the second largest park in Lynchburg, with seven multi-purpose fields, tennis courts, basketball courts, playgrounds, picnic shelters and trails. It is very popular among many city residents, including, athletes, active individuals, small children and nature lovers. The pond located in the park acts as a retention pond built to capture runoff and pollutants. In spite of its intended function and Peaks View Park’s multi-usage, the pond has flourished into a habitat teeming with a variety of wildlife.
Twenty-six Girl Scouts, scout leaders and city employees spent the day cleaning up the pond. The event took place at 10:00 a.m. with clear skies and temperatures of 24.4°C (76°F), providing the perfect weather to partake in an outdoor event. The participants took water samples from Peaks View Park pond; testing turbidity, dissolved oxygen, and pH. The water temperature was recorded as 10.8°C (51.44°F), turbidity at 40 JTU and a pH of 7.00. The most abundant types of benthic macroinvertebrates observed by the girls were dragonflies and scuds. The scouts observed many tadpoles, several various frog species, and noted a few turtles.
The Girl Scouts picked up trash in and around the pond to contribute to a healthier habitat for the wildlife. The overall day was a success and everyone had fun being outside and contributing to the World Water Monitoring Day event.
Vietnam
Six lower-secondary schools made history in January and May 2010 by being the first in Vietnam to conduct World Water Monitoring Day across an entire river basin. Nhue-Day River Basin.
The Department of Water Resources Management trained 25 teachers and more than 500 students to sample and test water quality and report their findings. A total of 14 water bodies were monitored including rivers, lakes and ponds. The sites were selected to represent the wide variety of waterways across the Nhue-Day River Basin.
The Nhue-Day River Basin is located in northern Vietnam and includes the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi. The catchment covers 7,500 square kilometers of land (2% of 
Vietnam’s total landmass) and has a
population of over 10 million people. The Nhue-Day River Basin drains into the Gulf of Tonkin. The river basin contains dense urban centres, industrial zones and intensive agricultural areas.
While engaged in the monitoring event, students learned how the river basin works and how protecting water quality can have beneficial impacts. Teachers and students used their data to discuss impacts in their local waterways and compared their findings with other sampling points.
Six schools were selected to represent the upper (Ha Noi and Hoa Binh), middle (Ha Nam) and lower (Ninh Binh, Nam Dinh) components of the Nhue-Day River Basin.
Posters were created by the students and shared with international partner schools located in the Hunter-Central River Catchment Management Authority in Australia. The students in Australia and Vietnam shared information, pictures and photos about their local water resources and water quality. The poster-exchange allowed students to develop an appreciation of the global issues that impact water resources management.