CLEVELAND — Nearly 11 million residents depend on Lake Erie for drinking water. To help keep that water safe, a tool called sondes is used to measure what is in the water. Its sensors detect a variety of data, from oxygen levels to potential contaminants. The data collected is instantaneously sent back to utility operators in real-time to make needed adjustments.
“Data from this instrument is used by drinking water treatment plants to understand what water they are going to treat today that’s going to end up in your tap water,” said Eddie Verhamme, an engineer with Limnotech. “So, by the time the water makes it to the plant, it’s already too late to treat it. The water is already there they have to deal with it. So, these give that early warning understanding of what the lake is doing.”
Sondes aren’t new, they’ve been around for about a decade. However, as technology improves, they’re becoming cheaper, giving smaller utility operators in smaller watersheds access.
“It’s critical that we do this so we are able to see whatever water quality we are seeing in Sandusky is being used in the same units of measurement and the same kind of track with what might be happening in Elyria or Ashtabula,” said Ebie Holst, Director of Clusters and Innovation at Cleveland Water Alliance.
This week people all over Northeast Ohio came to Cleveland State to learn how to use the sondes in partnership with Cleveland Water Alliance and Freeboard Technology. Bill Hayward with the organization, Friends of the Mahoning River, said they only sample once a quarter, but getting a sonde would allow them to test 24/7.
“In our situation, our river goes into the Ohio River, so we want to clean up the tributaries around the Mahoning River and clean up the Maumee River itself,” said Hayward.
In a separate project, Cleveland Water is installing Clear Reads in Westlake to replace all water meters in homes and businesses. It should reduce estimated reads, and provide early leak detection, accuracy in your water bill, and overall efficiency at no cost. Verhamme believes whether it's testing bodies of water or reading the water meter at home, improving technology and making data readily available is vital for good health.
“We are really trying to connect people across Ohio,” Verhamme added. “It’s one lake and there’s many people impacted by it and technology is one thing we are using more and more for people to have a safe and enjoyable experience on the water.”
Cleveland remains at the forefront of those efforts.
“Deploying all these different devices has actually made Lake Erie the smartest fresh body of water in the world,” Holst said. “That's actually attracting companies from all over the world and try their technologies here because of that infrastructure.”
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