To assist and speed up river pollution cleanup in the Great Tainan Area, River Restoration Center in Chang Jung University has conducted a series of public participation projects since 2002 under the sponsor of Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration (TEPA). Unlike the previous years in which the River Restoration Center directly coordinated River Watch activities to involve people in schools, communities, and environmental NGOs, we emphasized our roles on assistance and tool development, since year 2006. The tasks we focused this year included: (1) assisting Environmental Protection Bureaus of Tainan County and Tainan City in training and organizing their River Watch programs as well as promoting environmental education for river restoration; (2) holding Counselling and Oversee meetings to involve public opinions toward Erhjin River and Yenshui River cleanup; (3) establishing emergency response procedures to involve river volunteers during fish-die event; (4) maintaining the ‘River Information Network for the Great Tainan Area’ website; (5) conducting river-volunteer related gender mainstreaming study. We held seed teacher training workshops, and participated to 32 promoting acitivities in schools and townhall meetings in this year’s project. We also further promote the river environmental education, Water Environment Patch Project, to 15 schools, including elementary school, junior-high, and university, across the Great Tainan Area. The participants included 18 teachers and 462 students (132 certified River Guaridan Elf, 200 certified River Guardian Angel, and 129 certified River Guardian Ace). To involve the delegates of the River Watch groups into the watershed management planning, we have also held 6 routine Counselling and Oversee meetings to discuss the watershed environmental issues for the Erhjin River and 2 meetings for the Yenshui River. The suggestions about the Erhjin River were further submitted and disscused in 4 Erhjin River Program Implementation Committee meetings. The issues included pollution source control, biological investigation and sediment contamination study, the disposals of historical electrical waste digging up by the river bank construction, as well as river bank restoration. We have established an emergency response system involving both public sector and river volunteers.

Public Participation, Volunteer Monitoring Program, River Watch