hands the baton to Elsa (daughter of Hans Peterson, Saskatchewan
Research Council) who raised over $400.
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hands the baton to Elsa (daughter of Hans Peterson, Saskatchewan Research Council) who raised over $400. |
By Hans Peters, Team-Captain for buggerbuster's Safe Drinking Water Team
Prairie Water News launched a 24-hour Relay team June 18-19, 1994 to raise funds for children with disabilities. The team was comprised of people who work to improve water quality and was appropriately named the "bugger busters". bugger busters raised more than $7,000 for Saskatchewan's Camp Easter Seal, which was 4th best out of 65 teams.The event gave the bugger busters team an opportunity to champion water quality issues while improving the ability of children with disabilities to overcome their handicaps. In true Prairie tradition, everybody was chipping-in -- private companies, municipal, provincial and federal government agencies as well as academia and research organizations.
In addition to individual contributions, our team received support from corporate sponsors (contribution $500+), sponsors (contribution $200+) and contributors ($100+). Corporate sponsors were: Environment Canada, Ask Water, SC, Mainstream, Plastics Manufacturing, Flamingo 2000, Eagle brook, and PR. Sponsors were: MA Engineering, Alexander Consulting, Prairie Hem., and McGills. Contributors were Clifton and Associates, HAT Agra, Stanley and Associates, Water World and United Chemical.
The above agencies and corporations funded the production of 1,000 buggerbuster Safe Drinking Water T-shirts. We used the T-shirts to bring the Abilities Council and Safe Drinking Water messs to the public. The corporations received some of the T-shirts and people pledging $15 to our team received one as a thank you. One group of adult campers (80) at Camp Easter Seal received buggerbuster T-shirts and Flamingo 2000 put a T-shirt on all camp counsellors (80). Flamingo 2000 also sponsored buggerbuster's registration fee.
We also staged a June taste test in a mall in Saskatoon (this was reported by news media both in Regina and Saskatoon) where we challenged people to tell which water they preferred, Regina's or Saskatoon's. Saskatoon won with 60% of the vote. The City of Saskatoon buggerbusters were relieved, even if some of them voted for Regina! Next year we expect to have at least one buggerbuster from the Buffalo Pound Water Treatment Plant (which serves Regina); that should make for some interesting challenges!
Our main mess with the taste test was to show that both Regina and Saskatoon have excellent drinking water and excellent source water to treat. We compared that with some farm dugout water as well as a community supply. People were amazed that the community supply water was used for drinking. Some people refused to believe it was water. This particular community has a problem that is about 10 times as bad as Saskatoon and Regina; you can imagine the resources this community has compared with Saskatoon.
Our ongoing challenge is to increase the ability of communities and individual farmers to deal with the water quality problems they face. The magnitude of the challenge we face can only be matched by the rewards we will reap when we solve these problems.
