CITIZEN SCIENTISTS NEEDED
Help improve area’s water quality
A University of Windsor professor and his research team are hoping to enlist the help of 1,000 citizen scientists for a massive first-of-itskind collection of water samples in Essex County.
“This kind of study with this intensity has never been done anywhere in the world,” said Subba Rao Chaganti, an adjunct professor with the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research.
Starting Wednesday through Friday, members of the public are invited to pick up a collection bottle from one of several locations throughout the county. The citizen scientists will then fan out Saturday morning to collect a water sample for any beach, river, creek or lake and return it to the appropriate drop-off between 10 a.m. and noon the same day.
Chaganti and five graduate students are developing tools and techniques that can test thousands of samples in a few hours and target specific genes of a pathogen.
A pathogen is a bacterium or virus that can cause disease.
They are working on a process of measuring E. coli bacteria with a greater ability to distinguish between harmful bacteria and the many strains of bacteria that pose no threat to humans.
The team is also eager to study numerous samples from the same location to discover if high E. coli counts affect an entire beach or only a certain area.
“If a beach is closed because of harmful pathogens that’s perfectly fine, but if not, then we’re limiting our resources for public access,” Chaganti said.
The Windsor Essex County Health Unit conducts weekly tests of 10 area beaches in the county and the results are posted the next day.
However, a heavy rainfall before or after the test sample was taken could completely change the coliform count.
Chaganti’s three-year project is researching the latest technology to provide quicker more in-depth results and will look at possible treatment options “so we can keep the beaches open more.”
Those interested in participating can pick up a collection bottle between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at Sup and Sun paddle board and kayak rental at 193 West River Rd., Belle River; Windsor West MP Brian Masse’s constituency office at 1398 Ouellette Ave; 100 Jackson St. in Colchester; the Essex Region Conservation Authority at 360 Fairview Ave. W., and the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at 2990 Riverside Dr. W.
Bottles are available Wednesday through Friday at Point Pelee National Park from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Bottles can also be picked up Thursday and Friday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Leamington Kinsmen Recreation Complex.
Volunteers will fill out the bottle’s label detailing their name, the location of their sample collection and the GPS co-ordinates so researchers will be able to compose a spatial map.
ERCA is not open for drop-off Saturday, but the LaSalle Freshwater Restoration Ecology Centre at 1 Adams Lane will be open.
“This is going to give us some really cool data for future predictions,” Chaganti said.