Vocabulary

urban catchment, pollutant, water quality, prediction, chemical and physical pollution, toxic

A catchment story video transcript

This bowl of water represents a water catchment an area where rainwater is collected by the natural landscape. Here using a watering can, I'm demonstrating how water will fall on one side of the hill into one catchment and if it falls on the other side of the hill it will fall into a different catchment. Within the catchment water flows through creeks rivers and underground and will eventually find its way to the ocean. In urban areas rain flows along our streets and into stormwater drains taking with it any rubbish, leaves, oil and grease that may be found in an urban landscape.

Listen now to the story of an urban catchment. A man at the top of the hill decided to cut down a tree and the tree loppers chopped it up into woodchip. It rained and some of the woodchip washed into the creek. Also because the tree had been holding the soil together with its roots. Now there was a lot of loose topsoil and dirt washed into the creek. Further downstream a lady was painting her house and when she finished she washed the brushes under the hose and tipped the bucket into the gutter. Next door a man was washing his car on the road instead of on the grass and detergent got hosed into the drains.

Further down the road a household of five was having trouble with their plumbing. It was an old house and tree roots had cracked the sewer pipe and toilet paper was washing down the gutter with the overflow. As the water continued its journey down through the catchment it collected all sorts of debris. Old band-aids, tea bags, a plastic bag and a plastic bottle. Is anyone thirsty?

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Water quality testing in Buffalo Creek video transcript

I'm here in the suburban area that sits along side the Field of Mars Reserve. I'm also standing within the Buffalo Creek catchment area. All the water that falls as rain here will run downhill across the urban landscape directly into Buffalo Creek. As the water travels it collects litter, soil, oil and grease. This is known as stormwater.

Down here on Buffalo Creek I'm making observations about the water quality. It appears the water is really cloudy and there's lots of litter. So we're going to do some tests to test the water quality. Water quality determines how healthy the waterways are. It's ability to sustain life.

Once we have safely collected the water we are going to conduct 3 tests. The first test is to test the turbidity of the water to see how cloudy it is.

If its too cloudy water plants can't get sunlight for photosynthesis and aquatic animals find themselves swimming through silt and gunk.

We slowly pour water into the turbidity tube until we can no longer see the pattern at the base of the tube. The higher the water gets in the tube the clearer the water is. Our results showed a slightly cloudy reading which is poor turbidity.

The second test we will conduct is for phosphates which are chemical pollutants which come from different products we use such as detergents when we wash our cars or fertilisers which we use on our gardens.

After filling a test tube with a small amount of water we will put in a special tablet designed to test phosphates into the water and give it a good shake until it dissolves.

The final test is for dissolved oxygen. This is the measure of how much oxygen is dissolved in the water. It's the amount of oxygen available to living aquatic organisms.

We will then leave the phosphate and oxygen tests to dissolve for 5 minutes to see if there is a colour change. Unfortunately we got an average result for phosphate. And an average result for oxygen as well. And we always make sure we safely dispose of our waste.

Another test that is good to conduct is how mush visual pollution you can observe in the creek.

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Managing stormwater in Buffalo Creek video transcript

Improving water quality in our urban areas is a priority for land managers. Here at the field of Mars pollution from neighbouring streets is washed into stormwater drains. This water then flows into a constructed stormwater channel.

The features here all play a role in improving water quality in Buffalo Creek. First a rock lined channel slows the water reducing erosion and allows for physical pollutants such as soil and litter to drop into the sediment pond. Native plants are planted to then filter out chemical pollutants such as phosphates, oil and grease.

With the physical and chemical pollutants dealt with cleaner water then flows into the creek. Ongoing management is required to clean out the sediment pond. With a sediment removed the pond has a new lease of life.

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