Organizing and Water Testing Training Saturday, May 12th

KFTC is hosting an Organizing and Water Testing Training Saturday May 12th, from 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM at the Floyd County Public Library in downtown Prestonsburg. This workshop will focus on helping KFTC members identify streams they want to begin testing and then developing skills to reach out and involve members in the local community in order to build community ownership in understanding the results of the initial testing.

Community Organizing & Water Testing Training 

When: Saturday May 12th, from 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Where: The Floyd County Public Library in downtown Prestonsburg

If you Plan to attend: Please contact Kristi Kendall at 606-263-4982 or [email protected] or contact Kevin Pentz at 606-335-0764 or [email protected], we want to be sure we have enough equipment for everyone. Also please bring a jar of water from a nearby stream.

Lunch: We will provide soup beans cornbread, drinks and snacks, but please feel free to bring another dish to share with everyone.

p align="left">We will start off the morning with reviewing some principles of organizing and how this can be incorporated with water testing. In this first training we will be learning how to use basic conductivity meters and we will get an understanding of what is conductivity and why is it important. We will also be thinking through and developing skills to involve local communities in not only the testing but also in understanding the results.

I've been a water sampler on the Licking River and Big Sandy River Watershed Watch for many years. There is a lot of energy in the beginning, but that can diminish over time if volunteers do not see how their efforts lead to improved water quality. A community organizing element added to water testing is a great way to see that water testing results in cleaner water and healthier communities.

Doug Doerrfeld, Co-Chair of KFTC's Land Reform Committee

We will also be training members in methods for recording their test results in an on-line public database. This database will be able to show on a map where the streams were tested and what the tests showed.

We will also develop criteria to identifying what at the streams and communities where we want to consider doing more extensive testing.

In follow-up trainings we will discuss the results people have been finding and we will expand on people's testing skills and consider what further equipment or expertise we will need in our field testing.