Water quality testing brings Kentucky and eastern Indian students together

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KOLKATA – Students from ten schools of east India and twelve from US’ Kentucky state collaborated in a project culminating on Friday that explored water quality in the two far-off parts of the globe.

The project “Exploring Water Quality in Eastern India and Kentucky” was launched last year by the US Consulate General here, in collaboration with University of Kentucky and Association of Social and Environmental Development (ASED), to develop global citizens who pursue environmental protection as part of their civic responsibility

The participating schools were matched, based on geography and demographics to study water quality in their communities through University of Kentucky’s three online modules.

DAV Durgapur in West Bengal and Belfry High School, Kentucky were selected as the winners of the six-month project.

The students from Belfry High School are on a five-day visit to Kolkata from June 19.

“Getting out of the classroom setting and working on the project was very impactful and also being able to come here and seeing the excitement was a nice experience,” said Austin Dillon of the school.

The students of DAV Model School had travelled to Kentucky to present their work at the South-eastern Geological Society of America conference.

“We collected water samples from three different courses of Barakan River to look for any chemical changes and find the reasons. Water testing kit was sent from the University of Kentucky that helped us a lot,” said Aniket Nandi, DAV Model School Durgapur.

Most significant finding was the residual chlorine content.

“Testing various courses of river helped us to find that the chlorine content in the course where the Municipal Corporation takes the water for civic supply, had permissible range of Chlorine content (0.5 mg/L ) which explained why people actually drank water from the river without purifying,” said Simon Sarkar of DAV.

Talking about their experience in Kolkata, Aryn Adkins of Belfry High School said: “We have never seen a culture so rich and so much kindness from all the people.”