Green Party Councillor collaborates with Keep Kilkenny Beautiful, Veri Training and LAWPRO, on Water Quality Training for Ag Science Teachers

KKB help Ag Science teachers in Kilkenny acquire the skills for Water Quality monitoring.

Keep Kilkenny Beautiful have launched their first project to disseminate knowledge, skills and equipment for water quality monitoring and help light the fire of passion in the next generation of eager environmental and agricultural scientists, through their teachers.

KKB, as part of their voluntary work to raise awareness of the importance of restoring our local rivers and streams to good ecological status have been working for several years with The Nore Vision Trust and LAWPRO, the Local Area Water Programme. Several members of KKB have undertaken ‘Citizen Scientist’ training to identify where our rivers are potentially compromised and support the work of LAWPRO scientists in identifying priority areas of action.

KKB Chairperson, Pat Boyd identified the need to bring this training right into the schools, take the classroom outside and so embarked on an exploration of how best to do this. Working with fellow KKB volunteer Cllr Maria Dollard, local schools were approached to ask what they identified as priority training. Kilkenny College Agricultural Science Teacher Philip Ryan was quick to respond as he had observed an increasing interest from his students in understanding how to use ‘kick sampling’ and nitrate and phosphate testing kits, to help them understand how and why our water bodies are so degraded. Currently we have only one pristine river in Kilkenny and students from rural backgrounds are particularly interested in finding out more and investigating how we can reverse this trend.

With the help of a grant from LAWPRO and the expertise of Kilkenny based education experts VERI, a one day training programme was delivered to 10 Ag Science Teachers in the first of its kind in Kilkenny and maybe further afield.

The course took place last Thursday and in attendance was Minister of State with responsibility for Biodiversity, Malcolm Noonan who described the course as “a wonderful initiative because it arose out of the interest of the Agricultural Science students themselves and shows how deeply young people care for the environment. Perhaps we will see the next Dr Tara Shine or Dr Hannah Daly emerge from our students in Kilkenny”

Each teacher received a “Citizen Science Water Quality testing kit” worth €150 and Chair of KKB Pat Boyd said “I was particularly determined that no teacher left the course without the tools to carry out the job, to hand in their classroom. Training is only useful when it is put into action”

Cllr Dollard particularly praised the VERI training team who put together this programme for their willingness to engage in this small project but hopes it is the start of more to come. “the seed has been planted now and we hope to nurture it with more programmes like this in the future”