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Melbourne Water Education

Melbourne Waterwatch

Melbourne Waterwatch is a free river health education and monitoring program, which aims to increase community understanding, participation and ownership of local river health issues. It achieves this goal by providing a broad range of structured activities, which encourage schools and community groups to become actively involved in monitoring the health of Melbourne’s rivers, creeks and wetlands. Through monitoring, Waterwatch groups can help to identify pollution sources, determine the major issues facing their local river, creek or wetland, and establish what needs to be done at a local level to help improve its health.

Melbourne Waterwatch groups include primary and secondary schools, tertiary institutions, community, conservation and landcare groups, corporate groups, individuals and local government representatives.

Over 300 groups monitored 310 sites across the Port Phillip and Westernport Catchments during 2005, with over 32,000 people actively involved in the Melbourne Waterwatch program throughout the year.

Melbourne Waterwatch is a part of the Waterwatch Australia network. The program is sponsored by Melbourne Water, the Natural Heritage Trust, and every local council across greater Melbourne. Other supporters include the Department of Sustainability and Environment, the Merri Creek Management Committee, the Department of Primary Industries, and Southern Rural Water

Our objective

The overall objective of the Melbourne Waterwatch program is to provide the structure, expertise, and support required to empower students and community members to achieve the following:

• Gain a comprehensive understanding of river health issues
• Learn how to collect important water quality and river health information from their local creek, river, or wetland
• Interpret the information they have collected and understand what it means
• Discuss their findings with Melbourne Waterwatch coordinators to identify what can be done at a local level to improve the health of Melbourne's waterways
• Become actively involved in the implementation of on-ground works, with support from both Melbourne Water and local government, in order to help address local river health issues.

How we do it

Melbourne Waterwatch has designed a wide array of activities for people with varying levels of expertise. Previous experience and knowledge is not required to become involved in Melbourne Waterwatch. Participants can, however, be trained to become among the best river health monitors in Victoria.

• Groups just starting out are shown how to measure the pH, electrical conductivity, temperature, turbidity and flow rate of our local creeks and rivers.
• Additional parameters for more advanced groups include the monitoring of nutrient levels and dissolved oxygen concetrations.
• Macroinvertebrate surveys are another important, and extremely popular, part of the Melbourne Waterwatch program. These surveys involve the identification of all the 'bugs' and 'critters' found within the aquatic environment. Macroinvertebrates are an excellent indicator of river health, as different types of macroinvertebrates vary in their sensitivity to pollution.

2008 Training Sessions

Port Phillip and Westerport Waterwatch is a river health education and monitoring program which aims to increase community understanding, participation and ownership of local river health issues. It achieves this goal by providing a broad range of activities which encourage schools and community groups to become actively involved in monitoring the health of waterways. Through monitoring, Waterwatch groups can help to identify pollution sources, determine the major issues facing their local waterway and establish what needs to be done at a local level to help improve waterway health.

Waterwatch conducts free Training Sessions for community members and teachers to help improve water quality monitoring skills. Improved monitoring skills will improve the quality of community collected data and increase opportunities for the data to be recognised, accepted and used. Teachers are strongly encouraged to attend these sessions as they are extremely useful in improving skills in a particular area. After attending a Training Session, Waterwatch monitors become eligible to participate in the State-wide QA/QC assessments.

2008 Training Dates

Date	Day	Waterwatch Region	Location	Contact
March 13th	Thursday	North East Melbourne North Boonerwrung	Mernda Sustainability Centre	Trish Grant Julia Vanderoord
March 29th	Saturday	Westernport	Briars Park	Amy Paraman Melanie Smith
April 27th	Sunday	Maribyrnong Werribee Plains	Iramoo, Victorian University of Technology, St Albans	Sam Harrison Emma Taunt
May 18th	Sunday	Westernport Dandenong	Braeside Park	Melanie Smith Amy Paraman
June 15th	Sunday	North East Melbourne Merri and Moonee Ponds Creeks	Diamond Valley Learning Centre, Greensborough	Jane Bevelander Julia Vanderoord
July 20th	Sunday	North Boonerwrung Dandenong	Currawong Bushpark, Donvale	Trish Grant Melanie Smith
August 31st	Sunday	Maribyrnong Merri and Moonee Ponds Creeks	Edwardes Lake, Reservoir	Greg Woodward Sam Harrison
October 12th	Sunday	Westernport Dandenong	Briars Park	Amy Paraman Melanie Smith
November 23rd	Sunday	Werribee Plains	Werribee Treatment Plant	Emma Taunt TBC

Red : Coordinator running the session

If you would like to book in for a Waterwatch training session please contact your local Waterwatch Coordinator: