3 Water Tests Heather Secondary uses a combination of 3 tests to determine the water quality of the Bainespruit stream that passes through their school

Our Water Explorer team the Eco-Transformers

The miniSASS indicated that the stream was degraded and impacted on with a reading of less than 5. We only found a couple of shrimps and crab.

The Bainespruit is heavily infested with Alien invasive vegetation that is also water thirsty and doesn’t support other indigenous species

A natural level of nitrates should be less than 1mg/l Our sample showed somewhere between 2- 5 mg/l indicating eutrophication. Usually high N levels can be attributed to sewerage outflows or agric fertilizers

A natural level of phosphates should be about 0.05mg/l Our sample showed it to be about the same, this was good news as it does mean that there isnt necessarily too much domestic run off going into the stream at the moment… we are in our dry period as we know there is discharge from storm water drains during the rainy season