Eyes in the sky spot polluters
Camera-equipped drones help environmentalists find Clean Water Act violations
POOLESVILLE, Md. — When environmentalist Brent Walls saw a milky-white substance in a stream flowing through a rural stretch of central Pennsylvania, he suspected the nearby rock mine was violating the law.
Recent rains had filled the ponds at the mine that allow sediment to settle out of the water, but Walls couldn’t easily take a look because they were surrounded by private property. To quickly investigate and avoid trespassing, Walls captured images of the area with his drone.
“That’s when I found the illicit discharge,” he said. The photo of cloudy liquid provided evidence Walls used to accuse Specialty Granules LLC of violating the Clean Water Act.
Fifty years after that landmark legislation was signed into law, drones are giving environmentalists a new tool to capture wrongdoing where it is hard to see or expensive to find, though their use to investigate polluters is still pretty rare, Walls said.
He would like them used more often. With the help of a grant, he trains drone pilots for the Waterkeeper Alliance, a global network of clean water groups. The nonprofit wants activists to know how to use the technology for storytelling and to collect evidence that companies are polluting rivers and streams.
The Clean Water Act allows individuals — not just federal officials — to enforce the law. But citizens who want to use drones to collect evidence must have a federallyissued pilot’s certificate and navigate layers of federal, state and local rules.
Walls is the Upper Potomac Riverkeeper and part of a riverkeeper network that has used drones in a handful of other instances to collect evidence of pollution and threaten lawsuits if they aren’t satisfied with how companies respond to allegations. Drones were used, for example, to investigate a West Virginia coal operation that allegedly discharged coal residue into a nearby river. Walls said drone footage helped push the company to clean up the site.
Technological advances have helped expand the drone market. Miriam McNabb, editor-in-chief of the trade publication
Dronelife, said drones are now easier to fly, capture better images and can be programmed to automatically conduct surveys and track changes over time.
After Walls presented Specialty Granules with his allegations in 2019, the company stopped discharges through the pipe the drone had identified and installed a filtration system that improved water quality.
Matthew McClure, vice president of operations at Specialty Granules, said in a statement that the drone images helped identify the discharge of nontoxic stormwater and that the company uses drones in its own operations. But McClure didn’t welcome the surprise inspection.
“Unscheduled drone overflies can present a distraction and potential accidents to employees who operate heavy machinery,” McClure said.
The ubiquity of drones that shoot video has also triggered privacy concerns. Cam Ward, a former Alabama state senator who is now director of the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, sponsored a bill in 2020 to curtail drone use over “critical infrastructure,” a term that included mines, refineries, pipelines and natural gas plants.
“There has to be some expectation of privacy,” he said.