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How to navigate the Dirty Water book

Wave 6 is focused on building communities around water to take action on raising awareness, engaging the public, growing local groups, building allies, increasing knowledge and understanding. Demonstrating agency - peoples’ voices can and will be heard.

We thought of a SEQUENCE OF ACTION IDEAS, where each one builds on the previous:

• Blue Plaques for Nature print pre-made templates, or edit to produce your own and use a QR code to point to your group's sign-up or your event or info about your local waterway
• Fishy Business is our new idea for 'painting the streets style' actions.
• Cancel your Direct Debit for Clean Water is an easy way to create more work.
• Digital Do-it-at-home Actions can be started at any time.
• Invite your neighbours to a Community Assembly for Water
• The ultimate goal of Dirty Water Wave 6 is to arrive at a Citizens' Assembly on Water to address water management and pollution

CONTENTS OF THIS DIRTY WATER BOOK is structured into the following chapters:

• WAVE 6 contains the new action ideas of Wave 6.
• Assets is a chapter full of creative templates, flyers, stickers and more relating to Dirty Water.
• All Porpoise Actions has a load of ideas and instructions to support your actions.
• Knowledge is Powerful contains several pages with more in depth information and links to other information sources.
• Data Stream dives even deeper into numbers and facts around Dirty Water

Throughout the Wave 6 chapter you'll find WATER LEVEL SYMBOLS, an easy-to-understand guide to visually explain how much effort an action takes and/or how 'spicy' it is. The Water Levels are:

Dip your toe

These are fun and easy actions that won't take too long to prepare. A good example for a toe-dip is the Cancel for Clean Water action. Most digital actions are also part of this level, but some more time-consuming actions would be found be at the Swim level.

Have a paddle

These are easy actions with a minimal amount of risk and no lengthy preparation time. Fishy Business is one of these used to pre-promote an action or for outreach.

Have a swim

These actions involve a longer commitment or carry a small amount of risk. A good example is the Don’t Pay for Dirty Water campaign, where people refuse to pay their sewage bill over many month and risk their credit rating to take a knock.

Deep dive

These actions take a considerable amount of effort and resources to prepare and do, so local groups might want to take this on as a key project for a season. Organising an assembly is one of those projects.