UWI lecturer calls for swift detection of waterway pollution
THE MULTIPLE fish kill events that the Rio Cobre in St Catherine has suffered over the years have highlighted the increased need for improved monitoring exercises and the swift detection of waterway pollution to take place.
Dr André Coy, a senior lecturer in The University of the West Indies’ (UWI) Department of Physics, expressed this sentiment during last Thursday’s Science for Today public lecture series, which was hosted by The UWI’s Faculty of Science and Technology.
The lecture series was held under the theme ‘Dirty Water, Dead Fish and Distressed Communities: What do we do?’
Presenting on the work done by his colleagues – Dr Leary Myers, a retired senior lecturer of the Department of Physics and former chief executive officer of the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA); and UWI physics lecturers Dr Leonardo Clarke and Dr Jayaka Campbell – Coy spoke to the necessity of employing an automated waterway monitoring system that would help to prevent such disasters.
Coy introduced the Real TMS, a proposed solution developed by his colleagues.
The RealTMS, he explained, is a technology-driven waterway monitoring and warning system solution that comprises a network of sensors capable of measuring a wide range of environmental parameters in moving or still bodies of water.
These parameters include the water’s pH, temperature, turbidity, electrical conductivity and dissolved oxygen – a significant cause of fish kills.
The system also facilitates continuous real-time monitoring of our waterways.
Coy explained that the information received from the system’s sensors will be relayed to a cloud-based, online storage system and that the information is then displayed to the users of the system, providing them with information that they can act on. Such information can be accessed via the internet.
“This can be put in all the waterways that are of concern, it can be put in areas that need to be monitored constantly and so, when events occur, it doesn’t take us a day or two, we don’t have to wake up in the morning to see that something has occurred overnight, we can get an alert that something has occurred and investigations and mitigation can begin,” he said.
DASHBOAR
The system dashboard will project a map displaying all sites being monitored and will be colour-coded to quickly indicate the type of event occurring. It also has a clickable interface for quick viewing of live and archived data and the stations can be user specific, Coy stated.
He noted that the RealTMS had already been put to use by a private company and proven useful and therefore would be useful for the relevant stakeholders to employ.
The solutions put forward by NEPA, which include the use of the citizen monitoring approach, is not a sustainable one, Coy asserted.
He noted that the way forward was through the utilisation of technology.
“We need to think further with how we can do this without actually having to send people to go out and to measure things, having to wait for someone to have credit to make a phone call... . We believe in the Faculty of Science and Technology ... that we can do something a little bit different, something that will allow us to do this kind of monitoring that is required to engage in this kind of oversight in a way that can be done remotely, in a way that is quick, that is online and always available,” he said.
In response to the question posed on whether human detection methods were the best the country could do, Richard Nelson, senior manager for environmental management at NEPA and a member of the discussion panel, said the agency had plans on implementing an early warning system.
EARLY WARNING
“We started to do some enquiries about using an electronic system to give us early warning. We had met with some stakeholders who already use a type of early warning system to notify,” he said.
Nelson added that this course of action was something the agency seeks to explore along with the use of cameras to help the monitoring process.
He continued that the agency was also working with the various facilities within the industrial areas along the Rio Cobre to see how best they can minimise discharge into the river.
On numerous occasions, the bauxite and alumina company Windalco has been found responsible for many of the massive fish fatalities caused by the facility’s effluent discharge.
These kinds of incidents have occurred as early as 2011, which resulted in NEPA taking legal action against Windalco. The most recent large-scale fish killing occurred in July 2022 while a small-scale incident happened in December 2023.
Coy explained that currently the RealTMS is not self-powered, and that it has a maintenance period of approximately one to three months and is dependent on the water quality and monitoring sensors utilised. There also needs to be cleaning of the sensor probes.
Coy said a mobile application is planned for the system’s future expansion, given that the volume of emails and other communications that could cause a “drowning” of email notifications and that short messaging services (SMS) alerts can become expensive.
The team also plans to create sample storage, non-pollution indicating sensors such as flow rate and water level and work on making the system automated.
“I want to encourage us to think about partnering with the Faculty of Science and Technology because I believe that this solution is one that can take us a far way into solving some of the problems that we’re having with monitoring, with quick action, with being able to alleviate suffering and to mitigate economic loss and environmental degradation,” he said.
Coy then called for the private sector community, nongovernmental organisations, and members of the public to collaborate with the faculty to advance its efforts to mitigate these disasters through the use of tools like the RealTMS.