Environmental education is an approach to education which emphasises the interrelatedness of people and their human and non-human environments and seeks to encourage environmental awareness, concern and action. This case study documents the implementation and development of Project WATER, Grahamstown, a practical environmental education project dealing with catchment conservation and water quality monitoring. The Grahamstown project is one of a number of local water quality monitoring initiatives affiliated to GREEN (the Global Rivers Environmental Education Network). Participants in the project included student teachers from the Department of Education at Rhodes University and pupils and teachers from three farm schools in the district and four high schools in the town. Project WATER, Grahamstown developed as an Action Research and Community Problem-Solving project. The study focuses on fragmentalist and holistic approaches to education, people's responses to Project WATER and the choice of action research as the research method.