River Guardianz

Objectives Of The River Guardianz Project

2008-06-15T17:59:00.000-07:00

PUB’s Active, Beautiful, and Clean, or ABC Waters Programme was introduced in 2006. ABC Waters is a programme that aims to transform our waterways and reservoirs into community and recreational spaces. To contribute to the success of ABC Waterways at Kolam Ayer, Bendemeer Secondary School adopted the Sungei Whampoa River as it is nearest stretch of river from our school.Our main aim is to educate the public, mainly residents living in the area as we believe most of the students from our school stay nearby. We also aim to play an active and exemplary role in ensuring that the water along the river is of good quality as eventually the water will flow to the Marina Barrage and eventually forms one of our Four National Taps in Singapore.

Implementation of Project

2008-06-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

To carry out our River Guardianz project, we intend to carry out river patrol along the stretch of river on a fortnightly basis. During our patrol duty, we intend to clean up the river by cleaning up the river. We also intend to educate the public by talking to the residents and passerby in the area so as to encourage them to keep the waterways clean.
As this aims to create environmental protection and conservation awareness, we will not use brochures to educate the public as the residents may discard the brochures after reading it thus creating more wastes.
Thus we have decided to put up A2 size posters along the stretch of Sungei Whampoa River to educate and remind the public against polluting the environment.We aim to attract the younger generation in our save-the Earth movement. Thus we will continue to use our blog to constantly update them on the findings based on our patrol duty and other activities that we may have. We hope that this can entice the younger generation to visit our blogs and find out what we do. We hope that we can encourage and motivate some youngsters to join us in our save-the –environment movement.
As River Guardianz by informing the relevant authorities should we chance upon any major source of pollutions so that actions can be taken to rectify the situation.
We will also collect water samples from the river on a monthly basis and do some water quality testing of the water in the river.
We will use the data loggers that we have in our school to help us in the testing of the water quality. The data logger allows us to test the acidity of water, oxygen level, temperature of water as well as clarity of water in the river.
We will carry out the test once a month and we will analyse the results of the findings at the end of the year.
We intend to carry out the project during the June Holidays as it would be the best time for us to collect data and analyze it. We can also make use of this time to interact with the public which will make it easier us to explain the need of their cooperation to keep the river and its surrounding clean.

What We Hope To See

2008-06-15T17:56:00.001-07:00

We hope that with the river clean up that we have conducted as well as the public education that would have taken place during our patrol duty, the quality of the water in the river will eventually improve over a period of time. During this period of time, we also hope to see fewer litters along the river as this can be used as an indicator to show that our hard work has paid off!

Why Sungei Whampoa

2008-06-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

For very practical reason that it is very near to our school and it would be very convenient for us to carry out our patrol duty as well as sample collections.
We decided to adopt the Sungei Whampoa river as this river runs through Kallang River and eventually will flow to the Marina Barrage.
Hence the quality of water in the Marina Barrage will be very much affected by the quality of water at Sungei Whampoa.
We certainly hope that by keeping the water in Sungei Whampoa clean, there will eventually be cleaner water in the Marina Barrage.

River Clean up on 4th June

2008-06-15T17:26:00.000-07:00

River Guardianz reporting by the Sugei Whampoa River.

Picking litter from the river ain't an easy task.

A 'Milky Way' found on the river..

Spot any familiar objects?

Waterways Watch Trainings Pictures

2008-06-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

More pictures on WWS training.
Mavis doing a great job on cleaning up. Looks like she is well-trained (with the help of tongs and gloves) for the river cleaning 'battle'.

River Guardianz listening attentively...

Mr Sho doesn't mind getting dirty for the sake of environment. Kudos!

That's all for now, but there will be more coming up.
Time for River Guardianz to take a break have a kit-kat.

P/s Remember to throw your wrapper in the BIN and not the river.

Update on progress

2008-06-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

On 4th of June , our river project's members went on our regular patrol along the river . We tried to do some cleaning up of the river by using the new net pole bought by the teacher-in-charge. To our surprise, the river was very clean on that day. We gathered that this is due to the heavy rainfall the night before which would have increase the volume of water in the river.
Nevertheless, we spotted a lot of pollutants along the side of the river as well as along the ledge of the bridge. We did a quick clean up of the area and collected one full trash bag of rubbish.
After our clean up, we sorted the various types of pollutants that we picked up.
We also noticed some dirty water (filled with oil slick).

Here are the list of items that we found in or near the river.

(Click on table for clearer view)

Toodles!

Training at Waterways Watch Society

2008-06-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

We collaborated with PUB and Waterways Watch Society (WWS), to have a better insight on the importance of environmental protection and conservation. Our group members attended 4 training sessions conducted by WWS. These training sessions were very insightful and beneficial and included a presentation stressing the importance of keeping our waterway clean, a boat patrol, a bicycle patrol as well as a beach clean up session where we learnt how to identify the pollutants and how to remove the various pollutants from the river. We also learnt from WWS on how they helped to inform the relevant authorities in their patrol duty and how they spot as well as identify potential pollutants. The trainings were very useful as it helped us learn more about the relevant knowledge and skills that will help us to carry out our very own River Guardianz project.
Besides the identification of various pollutants, we also learnt how to identify potential pollutants such as loose bricks and banners that are sometimes hanging at the drains. We have learnt how these potential pollutants can cause negative impact to the environment as well as the ecosystem. All of us as well as our teacher-in-charge gained more exposure towards environmental protection and conservation through these training sessions and we are all certainly more convicted and committed to Save-The-Earth.
Here's Chuan Wah and Sholihin on the boat ride to Singapore River for a session of litter picking!

Here's some of us with two WWS members, posing before our ride. Not only were we doing our part for the environment, it is also a great opportunity to loose some calories!

WWS members checking out our Sugei Whampoa River, and giving us useful comments on the current situation.

That's all folks! More events coming up!
Stay tune!

Kickstart

2008-06-15T09:18:00.000-07:00

River Guardianz at work.
Meet up with fellow project mates and mentor (SiPing)to start on the river project.
As we are already very late in carrying out the project, we really need to get down to some serious work!We were briefed on the requirements of the entire project as well as important dates for the submission and presentation of the project.
What do we intend to do today??
We started our blog to post all updates of our project.We intend to do a river clean up today but before that we need to get our logistics ready. We bought two tongs and a pole net.

Green Efforts In School Part I

2008-06-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

The Booth to get your Recycling Bag customize!

Students doing their part for the environment.

Proud to be recycling!

Even teachers are contributing...

Students learning while playing computer games.

Prevent mozzie attack!

Looks like everyone is doing their part to keep the environment clean :D

Green Efforts In School Part II

2008-06-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

Besides, to gain more exposure in speaking to the public, we were also involved in the ABC Waterworks programme launched at the Geylang Bahru River on 5th April 2008. With some trainings as well as our own experience during our training with WWS, we proudly introduced various new water features at Geylang Bahru to the residents. Some of us even explained and demonstrated to the residents how these features can be used as a form of recreation activity.

Some of our group members also shared our personal experiences on the River Guardianz project as well as the training sessions that we attended with the Minister as well as the Guest of Honour at the launch. There is even a special mention of our efforts by Dr Yaacob Ibrahim Minister For The Environment And water Resources And MP For Jalan Besar GRC, the launch of the Kolam Ayer ABC Waterfront on Saturday 5 April 2008, 5 pm at Kallang Riverside.

Green Efforts In School Part III

2008-06-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

Our school organised a Green Week from 21st April to 25th April. The school collaborated with the National Environment Agency by having 3 interactive games in the canteen for students to learn more about playing an active role towards environmental protections and conservations.

We set up a booth to help students and staff design and decorate their recycle bags to encourage less use of the plastic bags. The school also collaborated with Tetra Pak by giving out free packet drinks to students who brought recyclable items to the recycling bins and discard them in the correct bins. After the students had finished their packet drinks, we would also encourage them to throw their empty packet drinks into the Tetra-Pak recycling bins.