Water Blitz Citizen Science

 Gilston Burn Citizen Science

Our sustainability manager is very community-minded; he considers himself a global citizen. He works to support communities worldwide by monitoring environmental issues and advocating against acts of environmental vandalism. While he understands that not everyone is concerned about global issues, he firmly believes we should closely monitor the environment in our own community.

Last year, he participated in the Great UK Water Blitz, a freshwater data collection event aimed at assessing water quality across the UK. Funded by Earthwatch, this initiative is an excellent way to care for and monitor our local freshwater resources. However, he was unaware of the act of environmental vandalism that would occur upstream of his chosen sampling point.

His selected spot was Gilston Burn in Polmont, where the main road crosses the burn. Upstream from this sample point, the burn was bordered by trees on both banks as it wound its way towards Rumford. He initially suspected that the slaughter animals in the surrounding fields might be contaminating the burn, but the trees seemed to have mitigated any issues, as the sample results were acceptable last year.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the slaughter animals, which massively contribute to the biodiversity loss crisis and contamination of our waterways—an issue that has severely affected Scotland for centuries (the country is literally sheepwrecked)—were not the main problem for this burn. Instead, a large building company has begun constructing 500 homes in the fields that were previously grazed by sheep. The first action taken by the housing developer was to clear the trees next to the burn before any excavation began. This massive operation involves installing rainwater runoff measures for the roads and pathways, which are made from environmentally unfriendly materials designed for car-dependent housing.

Residents of this new estate will be faced with additional fees for grass cutting because Scottish legislation currently lags behind British legislation (for now!) regarding biodiversity protection. Presently, falkirk district council is also trailing behind most others in the country in terms of their biodiversity protection and environmental policies. Roads, houses, and industries are not yet required to incorporate wildflowers, hedgerows, or tree planting into their developments.  Legislation will soon come into force to make plans for biodiversity highways , sadly too late for polmont 

Given these circumstances, it was unsurprising to our sustainability manager that phosphate levels were high in this year’s sample. He conducted this test in collaboration with the Community Council, who collected a sample from polmont burn at the other end of the town—a former village—which yielded good results. There is currently a tree planting project underway at that end of the village.

The hub initially requested 10 testing kits, with the Community Council using one and the hub using another. This leaves eight kits available. The sustainability manager, Kenny, and the convener of the Community Council, Michael, are considering using the remaining kits to sample other areas of the gilston burn to assess the risk to the Millhall Fishing Reservoir posed by these high phosphate levels.