Methodology for public monitoring of total coliforms, Escherichia coli andtoxicity in waterways by Canadian high school students

Public control and management of the environment and official decisions abo ut environmental issues increasingly require public environmental monitorin g by citizens. The aim of public monitoring is not to replace official moni toring. The difference is that official monitoring aims to determine if reg ulations are being broken, thus relying on accurate measurements obtained b y court-acceptable procedures. Public monitoring, on the other hand, aims t o determine if a site of concern to local citizens is a source of pollution ; this requires the establishment of a pattern of pollution, which can be o btained by a variety of methods, as long as they are scientifically sound a nd reliable. Once such a pattern is established by the public, the official agencies can determine if regulations are being broken at the site of conc ern. Accessible methods for public monitoring are validated in this work by comparing the results of monitoring of a group of local urban waterway sit es using simplified and inexpensive methods accessible to the public, with the results of monitoring the same sites using more expensive and modern of ficially accepted methods. The measurements were of total coliforms per 100 ml water sample, percent total coliforms that are Escherichia coil, and to xicity, using D. magna as endpoint. We found that high school students were able, after suitable training to produce values for the above parameters c omparable to those of an expert (G.S.) and to those using more expensive an d modern officially accepted methods. (C) 2000 Academic Press.