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It’s been a busy week for Ian, Christina and Jeanie, with two surface water quality training workshops in two days – one in Emerald and one in Theodore.

Having Christina and Jeanie present was a bit like “getting the old band back together again”, as it was Christina and Jeanie who delivered the very first surface water quality workshops way back in 2005.

The course has undergone some changes over the subsequent 11 years, but it still has the same purpose:

  • to help people to understand the importance of water quality, and how we measure and assess quality
  • to ensure that every sample taken is accurate, reliable and repeatable.

Decisions made on water samples can have very long-term consequences

We know that the water quality sampling that we, and our trainees, perform is used for making important and expensive planning and management decisions.

Decisions that can have very long-term effects on our water ecosystems.

So it’s important that sampling techniques are correct, and that people taking samples understand exactly why they are doing so.

A mixed group of students

The attendees were a mixed group, with landholders, mine and industrial site enviros, council employees and private industry represented.

We even had two trainees who travelled all the way from Innisfail to attend.  Hopefully they will take their new knowledge back to North Queensland and apply it to water monitoring in their own area.

Thanks to Fitzroy Basin Association (FBA), Central Highlands Regional Resources Use Planning Cooperative (CHRRUP) and the Dawson Catchment Coordinating Association (DCCA) for their support and hosting these workshops.

Thanks also to the Australian Agricultural College Emerald Campus for allowing us to use their training room.

Many of the trainees have requested additional training in specific areas, so we’ll have to get busy designing some additional courses over the next few months.