CLEVELAND — The Great Lakes are the fresh water envy of the world, with one-fifth of the world’s fresh surface water found in them, but it’s also vital for recreation and commerce. Lake Erie is the smallest and shallowest of the Great Lakes, so it is the most vulnerable to threats. Consider this, Lake Erie holds just 2% of the water in the Great Lakes but accounts for 50% of the fish and living organisms in them.
That's why the Cleveland Water Alliance has spent the past four years using the latest in technology to stay on top of conditions. And the month of May marks the start of what they call their smart lake season.
"Cleveland Water Alliance has established as the Lake Erie watershed as the largest digitally connected freshwater body in the world,” said Samantha Martin of the Cleveland Water Alliance.
For the last four years, they've been launching computerized smart buoys in the lake this time of year to monitor those ever-changing conditions.
"These buoys have brains and these brains are called sondes and sondes are made up of sensors that tell us real time information. Things like water conditions, how high the waves are, how fast the wind is going but also water quality information like oxygenation or PH,” she said. “Things like hypoxia, which is oxygen levels in the lake, that's really important for utility companies to know about to make your drinking water safe. Things like beach closures, real time e-coli detection. That's important for recreational purposes, wave heights to keep people safe. The Coast Guard has used our information in search and rescue operations as well.”
The program has at least one buoy in each lake county, more than a dozen in all, providing the information to researchers, yes, but also to boaters and water companies. In Ohio alone, there are 25 public water systems along the North Coast that draw their water from Lake Erie for a quarter of the state's population. Water has been threatened at times over the last decade by harmful algal blooms.
“The Great Lakes are home to 21% of the world's fresh surface water. So we are using our challenges as our opportunities where we're not only learning about what's going on in the lake but we're helping solve these issues right here,” said Martin.
Helping to deploy six of the buoys were students from Davis Aerospace Maritime High School in Cleveland, which partners with Argonaut to install and maintain the buoys during the summer months while opening students' eyes to a potential career on these very waters.
“I’ve been on the freighters, I've been on tug boats, ferries and now I'm working here helping the next generation find out about these careers,” said Davis Hall of Argonaut.
He works with the students about the potential these waters can provide.
“There's a huge shortage right now of qualified that can go work out on the freighters. It's becoming more difficult to find people that want to do it.”
Louis Tompkins said he plans to enroll in the Maritime Academy after high school taking in from this to one day this.
“I would be going to be a freighter pilot so I would learn about the Great Lakes area and how to work on a freighter,” he said.
