water quality

Water quality monitoring for the Ngakoaohia River in New Zealand is needed.

The Kaqchikel community is facing the challenge of not having access to good quality and safe water for domestic use. The water that is supplied by the municipality for domestic use is not drinkable. Another source of water that the community relies on for domestic use is the river which also has polluted water. In the meantime, assistance is needed for water quality assessments and monitoring as well as water purification so that the community can have access to safe drinking water.

We predict that there are high levels of contamination deposited on the snow due to emissions from industrial use in our surrounding area. Therefore, we need data on snow quality. But we do not have the data to know where the deposition is happening on the snow and what that loading is doing to the water system.

The water supply in Platfontein comes from the water distribution system but it is contaminated and therefore not safe to drink. That might be because Platfontein is closer to Kimberly which is a mining town as water in mining towns usually has a problem. In Richards Bay (another mining town) there is a lot of salt in the water and in Kimberly there is a lot of dirt in the water. For example, if you were to boil the water from Kimberly you will see dirt at the bottom of your kettle with brown stains which are hard to remove. This just shows how dirty the water is. And if there have been water cuts for a couple of days and when you try to open tap the water will be brown, which is a major problem in Platfontein, hence the need for better water purification systems in place. As a result of consuming contaminated water, people in Platfontein are already suffering from water-related illnesses including diarrhea and skin conditions.

Increased sedimentation, reduced water quality, and ecosystem degradation have been a major environmental threat to the catchment areas of Lake Baringo and Lake Bogoria. All these issues have been brought about by soil erosion in the upper sections of the two lakes where the source rivers feeding the two lakes originate. The use of space technology such as remotely sensed satellite imagery and other geographic information system (GIS) methods to assess and analyse soil erosion patterns in these two catchment areas will be able to develop solutions that will help to quantify the rate of sedimentation and come up with policies and targeted interventions to enhance soil and water conservation measures in these areas. Soil erosion in the catchment areas enhances sediment deposition into the two lakes, reducing storage capacity in terms of volume and also affects livelihoods that depend on these water sources.