Cleveland and so "Northeast Ohio" exist because of water... the merging of Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. Rising from Lake Erie to the south are the Cuyahoga and other watersheds with many rivers and streams feeding into the great lake. Our natural water resources made this a very healthy region. But human destruction of our watersheds and development of poorly planned industrial, commercial, residential, government and institutional facilities and infrastructure have made the condition of our natural water resources very poor, and that is harmful to our environment and economy... not to mention humans and wildlife. To help determine and improve the health of our waters and region, starting September 18, 2008, the people of the world and NEO are encouraged to participate in World Water Monitoring Day, "an international education and outreach program that builds public
awareness and involvement in protecting water resources around the
world by engaging citizens to conduct basic monitoring of their local
water bodies."

REALNEO's Zebra Mussel turned me on to this great opportunity to learn about water health, our waterways and our region by participating in the science of monitoring the water itself. Using a cheap, simple kit available through World Water Monitoring Day (ZM was nice enough to share with me his kit from last year), participants measure the temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH and turbidity of any water sites they choose, and submit their sites and data to an online database... the objective is to engage a million people in monitoring the health of our world's water. I've registered and analyzed six sites, so far - the Cuyahoga River near the mouth, Dugway Brook in Lakeview Cemetery, and Doan Brook at Rockefeller Park, Shaker Lakes Park, the Shaker Boulevard culvert, and Shaker Heights County Club by Attleboro. I started the process today, a week early, to capture some benchmark data after the rainstorms of the past few days rinsed out our waterworks, and probably contaminated much of it with raw sewage and storm runoff. I added these sites to the World Water Monitoring Day website and entered a first set of data... the entire process of collecting water samples, conducting the experiments and interacting with the website is fast, easy and educational.

Being simple tests with simple technology, the World Water Monitoring Day experience can be shared among environmentalists of all ages... and that is much of the point. By making it easy for all people to share in the monitoring of the health of our Earth, more people will share in protecting our water. Having conducted these simple tests of just a few indicators of water health, I am now interested to learn more about water health in general, and real NEO water health specifically. I plan to monitor a few more sites, and take multiple samples over time at all the sites I monitor... I'll take the next data set after a few dry days, to see how the data changes. Then, I'm interested to see if the time the samples are taken is significant, so will take several samples at each site in the same day.

I believe anyone interested in the environment should be interested by this program. You may learn everything you need to know to participate, and purchase testing kits (enough for 50 tests) for $13.00 plus $7.20 for shipping and
handling, at World Water Monitoring Day.

If you want to test a few waters on ZM's dime, let me know where and when and I'll bring his kit to your site and we'll monitor some water together... you know how to reach me.