FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 11, 2008
Media Advisory
The Avon Grove Charter School, with Support from Stroud Water Research Center, to Kick Off World Water Monitoring Month with Public Event and Program to Monitor Water Quality of Local Streams
Avondale, Pa. – The Avon Grove Charter School, with support from the educators at the Stroud Water Research Center, will kick off World Water Monitoring Month with a public event on September 23 designed to enlist community members in monitoring the health of their local streams—an important source of their drinking water. Students and parents from the Avon Grove Charter School of West Grove, Pennsylvania, will join their Pennsylvania and northern Delaware neighbors who live in the White Clay Creek watershed to learn how to test the water quality of this natural resource that supplies 120,000 residents with drinking water.
World Water Monitoring Day, September 18th, marks the beginning of a month of activities intended by its organizers, the Water Environment Federation and the International Water Association, to build global awareness and get individuals — and entire communities — involved in protecting their drinking water supplies. Sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and several corporations, this month-long event will culminate on October 18, the anniversary of the 1972 signing by the U.S. Congress of the Clean Water Act, enacted to help restore and protect our nation’s freshwater resources.
“Providing opportunities for students, parents, and community members to come together is instrumental for authentic learning,” said Sue Howard, Teacher and Coordinator of the Preserving Our Watershed & Environmental Resources Program (POWER) at the Avon Grove Charter School. “The POWER program lets our students do what comes naturally to them — explore and ask questions about the world around them. We hope the findings from World Water Monitoring Day will guide our students to recognize areas of need and develop projects to improve the quality of the watershed.”
“Knowing how to test our local waters and understanding how the yielded results affect our local habitats is primary to understanding how to protect and preserve our watersheds. This is an excellent opportunity for families and neighbors to engage in hands-on data collection and assessment of their own waterways and ultimately affect their health in a positive way,” said Laura MacKelcan, Avon Grove Charter School’s Coordinator of Trout in the Classroom.
At the kick-off event, to be hosted at the Stroud Water Research Center’s Avondale campus, Stroud educators will assign stream sites for monitoring and then demonstrate how to perform water chemistry tests, including temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen. Community members, parents and students of the Avon Grove Charter School will be invited to sign out water Test Kits and asked to report their water quality results by uploading their data sets to the World Water Monitoring Day website by October 18th.
“Our streams and rivers represent the lifeblood of our economies, and their health is inextricably linked to our own, as they also supply our drinking water,” said Susan Gill, Director of Education for the Stroud Water Research Center. “The goal of the Avon Grove Charter School program is to begin the education process about each of our roles in the preservation and protection of our water supplies.”
Public Event
The public is invited to attend the World Water Monitoring Day Kick-off event.
Date: September 23, 2008
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: Stroud Water Research Center
970 Spencer Road
Avondale, PA 19311
Media Coverage
The media are welcome to attend and photograph the kick-off event at the Stroud Water Research Center’s Avondale campus, 970 Spencer Road, on September 23, 2008, at 6:30 p.m.
