Water Quality Monitoring around Par and Tywardreath:

Why bother?

Getting involved in checking out the water quality in your local area can be a fun way to meet people, learn a new skill and help gain some insight into your local waterways. Full training is available! Read on to find out more!

Polmear Stream                                          Phosphate testing

Many factors affect both appearance and content of water in our rivers and streams, such as amount of rainfall, proximity of trees and shrubs, tidal influences, proximity to farmland, field 'run off', presence of water treatment plants and frequency of sewage outflow. Both the River Par and Polmear Stream feed into the sea at Par Beach. Thus, gaining an understanding of how the water quality may change during the year and factors that may influence this is an important part of improving knowledge of Par Beach.

Friends of Par Beach supports all efforts to conserve and enhance Par Beach and Local Nature Reserve. In keeping with this, some members have undertaken training to support an extension of the Citizen Science Initiative to carry out water quality testing on behalf of West Country Rivers Trust. The Trust are able to utilise the data to support lobbying groups in challenging water companies and the government to improve standards and infrastructure.

Water samples are tested on a monthly basis by trained volunteers and fed into a large database to review trends. Several local conservation groups are also involved in neighbouring areas, including Friends of the Luxulyan Valley and Three Bays Wildlife Trust.

On the Par River, testing is carried out at 12 sites. We test for; phosphates, dissolved solids, temperature, turbidity and also record other data such as flow and evidence of pollution. If you would like to see the results and more detailed explanation, follow this link.

https://www.luxulyanvalley.co.uk/the-valley/water-quality-monitoring/

In a couple of places along the Par River, bacteria levels are also tested. The river trusts also produce the delightfully named "sewage map", which shows discharges into UK rivers in previous years

https://theriverstrust.org/key-issues/sewage-in-rivers

Par River Slipway                                                            Treesmill Stream

This is a new venture for Friends of Par Beach, but we are excited to be involved in such an important project and look forward to sharing some results with you all in due course. We can always fund room for more volunteers, committed to giving an hour or two per month plus initial training. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact:

brian.harrison5@gmail.com