[00:00:00] Max Herzog: Thanks everyone so much for taking the time to join our session here today. Max Herzog, Deputy Director of Programs and Partnerships at Cleveland Water Alliance, and I'm just gonna get us kicked off here for, just a second before handing it over for this amazing panel presentation we have coming up today.
[00:00:27] Welcome to the first of a series of two sessions this year as part of the State of HABs Mitigation. This is our second year doing a series collaboratively between Cleveland Water Alliance and the Great Lakes HABs Collaborative. The prior year we did one about monitoring, and we really heard from folks that they wanted to hear more about the technology that was actually that's out there that's actually being used to address harmful algal blooms and nutrients in the field.
[00:00:57] And so today we're gonna dive in with a great panel discussion with some of the innovators developing and using these technologies. I do wanna flag that we do have a second session, as I mentioned. That'll be in June, and that'll be focused on nutrient mitigation, similar format but with different companies and a different moderator.
[00:01:16] Can we go to the next slide, Amber?
[00:01:22] Thanks so much. And just a little bit of housekeeping. This is a webinar format, so attendees will not be able to unmute or turn on camera. So we ask instead that you share any questions that you have throughout the discussion using the Q&A button at the bottom of your toolbar. Important to to, note that is different than the chat.
[00:01:46] The chat is a place that folks can comment but we'll be looking to the Q&A button first, or the tab first for questions. So if you put your questions in the chat, we may come to them later if there aren't a ton in the Q&A. But if you wanna make sure we address them, please do drop it in there.
[00:02:10] And please, again, feel free to comment throughout. Panelists are able to respond via text to those Q&A questions, so they may have time to do that during the panel, but otherwise that is where we'll come to at the end for Q&A. Next slide, please. And with that, it's my great pleasure to hand it over to our expert moderator here today.
[00:02:32] We're very fortunate to have Amber Stillwell, who's a coastal outreach specialist with Pennsylvania Sea Grant to really bring the practitioner and research perspective and facilitate the rest of the discussion. So with that, I'll hand it over to you, Amber. Thanks so much for being here.
[00:02:50] Amber Stilwell: Thanks, Max. Hi, everyone. I'm super happy to be here. As Max said, my name is Amber Stilwell. I'm a coastal outreach specialist with Pennsylvania Sea Grant. And before we get into our high-level overview of harmful algal blooms and our amazing panel discussion, I just wanna give a brief, introduction to our panelists.
[00:03:08] So with us today, we have an amazing team. We have Kendall Byrd with Caddis Tech, Michael Corridan from Alarivean Incorporated, and Lawrence Lambert from Ion Works Incorporated. So you'll be hearing from them very shortly about all of their amazing work. And as stated in the beginning, we'll just be diving into a very brief high-level overview of harmful algal blooms to set the tone and get everybody on the same page.
[00:03:37] Before I dive into that, I wanna talk a little bit about Pennsylvania Sea Grant. We have three legs of our program that consists of research, outreach, and education. You'll find most of my work in the outreach component, where I try to brid-bridge a gap between science and people, so taking what the researchers are learning and delivering it to the audiences that need it most.
[00:03:58] And if this is your first time hearing about Sea Grant, we have a Sea Grant program in every state across the United States that touches a Great Lake or an ocean. So Pennsylvania is very fortunate to have a portion of the coastline of Lake Erie, where I work out of the Erie office and have done over a decade of work in harmful algal bloom research and outreach in that community, and now I'm broadening my horizons statewide.
[00:04:25] And I'm super, super happy to be on the steering committee of the Great Lakes HABs Collaborative, which is how I got here today to just dive right in cyanobacteria and harmful algae. So harmful algal blooms, or HABs, occur when these cyanobacteria are blooming to excess and also producing those dangerous toxins that we discuss so much.
[00:04:47] Now, it's important to remember that algae and bacteria are producers and food sources in aquatic environments. They are natural, but that excessive growth can really lead to the blooms, and those toxins, when they're present, can create human and environmental health concerns. Blooms form under the perfect storm of excessive nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus in the system hot temperatures, and lots of sunlight.
[00:05:12] Excessive nutrients seem to be the driving factor of the toxin production as well as the harmful algal bloom formation. And additional considerations are things like heavier than usual rains that are followed by really intensely hot weather, we'll typically seem, see very intense blooms under those circumstances, and then of course our longer lasting summers.
[00:05:38] So cyanotoxins are the root of what can really cause those human and animal health concerns. They are produced under the right conditions. That might include a combination of specific light intensity, nutrient levels, temperatures, and humidities. They can cause numerous health effects, including headaches, diarrhea, skin irritation in humans, but in canines and other small mammals, they can cause seizures and even death.
[00:06:05] And then I just have a list there for you the most measured toxins in the United States, which consist of microcystins, cylindrospermopsins, and many others. So it's important to remember that there are many different species of cyanobacteria that in each of them can produce several different types of cyanotoxins.
[00:06:25] And it's also important for us to remember that the exposure to these toxins can lead to those health risks. So the reason that we are so worried about dogs is that they interact with water much differently than humans. They are much more likely to drink the water and lick it off their fur after they have been playing in a freshwater body.
[00:06:43] And the HAB toxicity treatments for canines are very expensive and have little success in actually working. Human poisonings are extremely rare, but we should still be cautious. Chronic exposure can lead to h-- can lead to unknown health impacts. And children, because of their smaller body mass, can be more easily affected.
[00:07:04] So prevention is the, key to preventing exposure and keeping everyone safe. Making sure that you're checking for signage checking the water visually before you enter it. And if you do think that you've been exposed to a harmful algal bloom or that your dog has been exposed to a harmful algal bloom, it's always great to ensure that you take the safety precautions after you've been recreating of rinsing off, bathing, changing out of that swimsuit, and monitoring your pet closely for several days to see if they have any side effects.
[00:07:38] So in order to give you an understanding of what harmful algal blooms look like before we dive into our panel discussion, I wanted to just talk about the difference between visual and physical assessment. Please know that you can also have microscopic assessment, which is checking for things under a microscope, and you can also do chemical assessment, but I left those two off the table today for our very brief overview.
[00:08:02] So this is where you get to test your knowledge. And in the first category, these are visual representations of what are likely not cyanobacteria. So this, what you're seeing here, is actually duckweed, and this is commonly a phone call that I get in the summer, and people say "I think I have a harmful algal bloom on my pond."
[00:08:23] And I say, "Take a really close-up photo. If it's granular and looks like little pieces of green rice, then it's not, likely not a cyanobacteria bloom." And this is what duckweed looks like up close. You can see it's actually a rooted, a rooting vegetative plant. It has long rootlets that extend into the water, and it has leaves.
[00:08:43] And this is another common one. This is actually a Cladophora. So i-if you-- this isn't a great photo, but you can kinda see that footprint in there. If you actually stuck a stick into this, you can lift it up. Now, cyanobacteria, you can't really lift with a stick. It might look similar to paint being on a stick instead of what that looks like, which is long, stringy substance that you can lift up out of the water.
[00:09:07] So these are not cyanobacteria. They may be nuisances. They may be kinda gross and smell funny. You might not wanna swim in the water that they are in, but they are not producing toxins. Now, something that might be cyanobacteria could be floating to the surface of a jar. If you've taken a jar of water and set it somewhere, leave it there for twenty minutes, and you'll see that settlement come to the surface.
[00:09:32] That's called a float test. You also might see something that looks very much like spilled paint or squeaky. If you stick your hand in the water, it will come up on the surfa- on your glove, on your gloved hand looking almost like paint. And there's the streaks that I've been talking about in many of the photos that I've shared.
[00:09:51] This is typically what we will see when we see a very heavy cyanobacterial bloom. So that physical assessment is that float test that I mentioned. I'm gonna skip this slide since I already talked about it, but just know that this is a process. You can take that water sample and wait fifteen to thirty minutes and see if you get that cyanobacteria floating to the surface.
[00:10:11] The downside of the physical and the visual test is that you don't really know what type of cyanobacteria you're dealing with, and then you have to look into microscopic analysis to see what kind of cy- cyanobacteria, so what species, and that will also then tell you if it is capable of producing toxins.
[00:10:28] But generally it is important to know what you're looking at, whether you have cyanobacteria or not, so that you can make a safe and smart decision for yourself. And always sample with personal protective equipment. So if you are thinking about doing any sampling or you already do, please make sure you're wearing those gloves and waders and wash your arms and hands thoroughly with soap and water after that sampling So getting into harmful algal bloom mitigation.
[00:10:56] So some general mitigation concepts are the concepts of reducing nutrient pollution at the source, improving water circulation and oxygen levels, and then considering those emerging innovations, which is what we are talking about here today. So to flip the script and close out my portion of this conversation, I'm gonna put up my contact information very briefly, and we're gonna dive into our first question.
[00:11:24] So let me stop sharing And we will start discussing. Panelists, are you ready?
[00:11:35] Lawrence Lambert: Yes. Yep.
[00:11:37] Amber Stilwell: Wonderful. Thank you all for being here today. Your first question is can you give us your perspective on the evolving state of harmful algal bloom mitigation today, and how is new technology changing that conversation?
[00:11:55] Kendall, we'll hear from you first.
[00:11:58] Kendall Byrd: Hey, Amber. Thanks for the question, and thanks for letting me be here today. So I guess to put us in perspective, we usually handle smaller water bodies definitely twenty acres or less. And so in those water systems, it's usually decentralized private water systems.
[00:12:15] And so what we're hearing there is kinda two things. One is this move away from a chemical application, which ninety-five percent of the time is a copper sulfate application. The reason why is there are health concerns around this, some carcinogenic effects that may or may not be present that's still up for debate.
[00:12:33] But the bigger one is that copper sulfate isn't exactly targeted. And so in these private residencies, you may be spraying it on the water, but it's a windy day, and you end up killing other vegetation, such as older trees or something that you really don't intend to do the other kind of conversation we're hearing is moving away from this kind of reactive management strategy, which is copper sulfate, right?
[00:12:56] I'll come out every two weeks, I'll spray it, and for a week it looks good. The next week it starts looking bad again. And individuals are wanting a more consistent aesthetic for their ponds, more consistent reliability that's less labor-intensive. And so at Caddis, we deploy what you can think of as essentially a Roomba for water.
[00:13:14] Stays in the water twenty-four/seven, turns on, cleans and then turns off and does that at some set frequency. And we can pilot remotely. And so we've tried to wrap up this idea of prevention, treatment, and monitoring into a single device.
[00:13:29] Amber Stilwell: Wonderful. Thank you, Kendall. So many amazing innovations that I'm so excited to learn about today.
[00:13:35] Michael, would you mind sharing next a little bit about your perspective on the evolving state of HAB mitigation today and technology?
[00:13:44] Michael Corridan: Thanks, Amber. These are not blonde highlights. I've been around a little while as I look at the evolving state of HABs mitigations, we can go back to when aeration and oxygenation were kinda started Then hydrogen peroxide worked its way in there or the fancy dust versions of that.
[00:14:04] There's been people who have been trying enzymes or those microbials whether it's bugs in a jug or probiotics. Sonication has been out there. People lacing hydrogen peroxide with copper pellets. The ammonium chloride modified clay people is-- that's still being promoted by otherwise really smart, HABs people.
[00:14:24] And of course, you go to the prevention side, right? You look at the minimization of fertilizer usage, particularly around edges or the coastlines, the stormwater filtration plays. I think everybody's got a spectacular solution here, and I think there are horses for courses. There may not be a silver bullet, but I am a huge believer that there's silver bullets plural.
[00:14:52] I've watched some of the crazy stuff going on out there over the years maybe even frustratingly. I watched Biscayne Bay using their multimillion-dollar fireboats to shoot water up into the air to capture some of the oxygen to remediate their hypoxia and fish kill events. Yet their task force isn't particularly interested in talking to NOAA or engaging in some of these technologies.
[00:15:17] So it's clear to all of us that in this evolution, there's more education to be had and trying to improve the consideration of these technologies. I'm clearly watching the same evolution movie as Kendall. The toxicity issues around copper sulfate, of course. Some of the scary algaecides and metal solutions that are being used.
[00:15:38] You shouldn't be reducing toxins with toxins, so I think we're all moving in that direction. It's also really refreshing to see that oxygen only, whether it's nanobubbles or however you're doing it, people are starting to realize, hey, that's just a stiff insult to a HAB. It's time to move up the power there a little bit, whether it's through advanced oxidation like we're using or electrocoagulation like Lawrence is introducing.
[00:16:06] We have to create a little bigger punch in the face. The key there, of course, is that it's not toxic, that it's not creating a secondary or collateral issue. We are big proponents, of course, of advanced oxidation processes. We won't apologize for when you can get an oxidation level up close to fluorine, which is poisonous and would kill all of us, yet our collateral damage is just improved oxygen.
[00:16:31] That's the state. That's where we're going. I'm excited that we've moved away from some of those early well-meaning processes. The technology has gotten very good. Lastly, I promise this will be quick. The real evolution of what we're doing is Earth observation and AI. It's not our own technologies. Google Earth, MODIS Microsoft Planetary, Planet Labs.
[00:16:55] The fact that there's such great technology, I'm thrilled to be told where to go. So there is now this great technology that's been paid for available to us that makes what we do so incredibly better. It's a crime not to be taking that into the mix. My God, the hard part's been done. We know where to go now.
[00:17:16] So whether it's what Lawrence is doing, Kendall doing on the smaller water bodies, what we want to do for large water bodies, if you ask me the key evolutionary step, EO and AI. AI is predicting where blooms are gonna form. That's what's so spectacular. I better be quiet and learn from these co-panelists.
[00:17:35] Thank you.
[00:17:36] Amber Stilwell: Thank you, Michael. That's very interesting. And Lawrence I'm interested to hear your perspective on this.
[00:17:41] Lawrence Lambert: Thank you, Amber, and thank you, Michael. Thank you, Kendall. Yeah, you're right. The field is finally recognizing that algal blooms are a nutrient problem with a biological symptom, not a biological problem to be killed off.
[00:17:56] And that recognition changes everything about how we engineer treatment. And that's exactly where Ion Works has positioned its technology for the last several years. Our OxyBot platform treats the cause, not the symptoms. The onboard electrocoagulation system binds phosphorus into a stable, settled precipitate.
[00:18:18] The same end product as conventional alum. And the chemistry we already validated across decades of Washington State restorations, yes, some from the West Coast, but generated on demand from a solar power sacrificial anode as OxyBot, our platform, patrols the lake. So no tanker trucks, no slurries, no annual barge crew.
[00:18:39] And we close the phosphorus loop entirely. Our StreamGuard system treats the rivers and streams flowing into the lake, while OxyBot treats what's already in it. So we address, So if we only address one, then the horse has already left the barn. So we've also engineered our platform to do more than drift and hope.
[00:18:59] It actually uses active capture technology where we have engineered electric and hydrodynamic fields that pull the algae and phosphorus inwards, multiplying the encounter rate roughly tenfold over a passive platform. And finally our platform, we can also we've added a, small winch. Octobot Plus adds a winch multi-parameter probe that profiles the full water column, feeding data harmonized with the popular or the most recent lake bed US benchmark.
[00:19:35] So every deployment contributes to the wider science that treats the lake. So Octobot learns each lake's seasonal signature, predicts where the blooms will start, and treats these hot spots before they form. So that's that's where we're going and a lot of what I've said is is available on our website.
[00:19:57] Amber Stilwell: Wonderful. Thank you, Lawrence. Thank you all for those amazing responses, and it's so wonderful to hear the direction that harmful algal bloom mitigation is headed. And I really love what you said, Michael, when you said not treating a toxin with more toxicity. It's just very interesting and sticking with me.
[00:20:17] So I'm curious in our, next question, what limitations, risks, and other barriers stand in the way of implementing these solutions at scale? And what have you seen cause promising mitigation projects to fail? So Michael, we'd like to hear from you first.
[00:20:36] Michael Corridan: Thank you. As probably, and this is true for all of us, as we look at the limitations or what's made this harder than maybe it should be if you're out there with a new technology and it's a novel approach, you go out there looking for, I'll call it the legitimizers or the key influencers or the people who say, "Hey, this is worth looking at, and let's get after it."
[00:21:01] It seems though, that many of what we would call those key influencers, whether it's the academic experts, the NGOs the great work you're doing there's a pressure to land those grants to have opinions on what's going on, and sometimes there's pressures that dwarf moving all the way to the actual solution.
[00:21:27] I think people know where the nails are. We know how many. We already know what color. We know how big the head is. We know what'll happen if we don't drive that nail in. I think the three of us and many others are thinking about, "Hey, maybe it's time to buy a hammer." So it's been very sexy in this water world to support, to invest in, measure, monitor watch it, and Max even suggested that in his early comments.
[00:21:55] That's what the key influencers, it'll be cool when there's additional pressure on them to take it through to the solution side and actually buy that hammer. If you want, in one word, the biggest limitation, it's regulatory. I don't wanna embarrass any particular state or EPA or DEP, but my God, do they make it hard to put something in the water.
[00:22:18] So we can put all of that extra E. coli or pollutants in there, but God forbid you move any kind of oxidant in there. I'll give one example. In one state, I had to take out a waste discharge permit to go out and address the waste in the water, and that took 18 months. So the biggest limitation, I think, for all of us is regulatory.
[00:22:41] Or more specifically, inter-regulatory. I've been doing some work out in Salton Sea. Two years ago, there was 32 agencies that had some input to what you could do to help some of the issues in Salton Sea. Rather than fight that fight, we've had to take a lot of our work international, where there's people who want to fix the problem rather than tell you why you can't do a certain thing.
[00:23:04] Things are getting better. I don't want this to be negative. California has cutting green tape now. They understand that there's a lot of craziness in the regulatory side of things. In my case, ozone's been used in drinking water since 1904. You use the word ozone and somebody will have a baby. So let me just stop by saying our limitation is regulatory, but the education that you are doing, Max is doing, building these bridges, is the exciting part of where it's going forward.
[00:23:32] Thank you.
[00:23:34] Amber Stilwell: Thanks, Michael. And I, think it's important that we do keep this conversation positive, like you said, but we can't learn from our failures if we don't talk about them. And so I, love this question, and I love your response. Kendall, I'm curious what your response is.
[00:23:50] Kendall Byrd: Yeah. Lucky for us, we got to skip some of the, I guess what you would call regulatory hurdles.
[00:23:55] I have heard horror stories from those around me. But again, we're in small private water bodies. Unless it's in quote-unquote connected to water bodies of America, we don't have to worry all too much about that. But something we've seen in the space is especially working on small water bodies, is the lack of funding.
[00:24:14] And I don't mean just institutional funding. I do think there's a decent amount of money out there as far as grants goes from things like NOAA, EPA HABCTI, these things. But those are usually geared towards Lake Erie, your large natural water bodies. And we are overlooking the fact that ninety-five percent of the water in America is twenty acres or less by count, and that equals around thirty percent of the volume of water in America.
[00:24:38] And these are all decentralized systems with no monitoring, essentially no monitoring, no oversight, and it's usually some guy that's figured out how to do it after ten years on the job to make it look good. And so for us, I think funding has been a hurdle 'cause there's not much institutional funding for something that small.
[00:24:56] Again, this is usually geared toward large-scale implementation big, projects. And then private funding is jaded towards water tech. Luckily we, have been able to overcome that hurdle. But early on, you mention water tech to a private investor, and they have four or five horror stories of where they were scarred.
[00:25:13] It worked on an acre, we tried to scale it up, and everything fell apart. Or again, you run into that regulatory framework, and now you need a whole another round of investment just to get past th-those regulatory hurdles. And so for us, I think it's been what we see a lot in the market is funding that's killed really awesome technology.
[00:25:30] When I meet the founders, I meet the individual, I see the tech, I'm excited about it, I'm stoked, and they run into this paid wall because it takes time to develop hardware. And especially in something as continuously changing, as corrosive as a water environment it takes, a few trials to get a piece of hardware you can trust to leave out there and to do its job.
[00:25:51] And I think at Caddis, we kinda think of how can we make something durable, cheap, profitable, and customizable is the big piece. Because I, like to say that every pond has a personality so it just can't make money. It has to also be customizable. There's not, as Michael mentioned, one silver b-- one silver bullet.
[00:26:10] There's multiple b-bullets, and it needs to be able to be customized for these purposes.
[00:26:16] Amber Stilwell: Thanks, Kendall. That's so very true. Every water body has a different personality and a different take, and so all of these mitigation tech- techniques are gonna look different. And I think that's, great that you can make a customizable product and share that at the best cost to the consumer.
[00:26:33] Lawrence, from your perspective tell us about some of your ideas in this space.
[00:26:39] Lawrence Lambert: I, don't think I can really talk what Michael has said and following up by Kendall, but I've learned to come up with my own definitions of of the, some of the barriers and I call them gatekeepers.
[00:26:57] And communities watch their lakes deteriorate while the paperwork moves at the speed of the slowest agency. And a lot of lakes have got about four overlapping agencies, and it's difficult to get all the ducks and drakes lined up in order to actually approach the job and, offer a potential solution.
[00:27:18] And second to that is as Michael aptly put it, is the perception of chemistry. And we are offering aluminum electroflocculation, and immediately the audience will stiffen up and go, "Oh my God, that's chemistry. What's happening here?" And so we're fortunate in our bits, the fact that we're hoping to be landing a a, grant sooner or later with Cornell University.
[00:27:51] We're gonna do the background toxicity studies on imparting aluminum into the water. But aluminum is just another surrogate of alum, and alum is being used successfully in about 21 lakes in the state of Washington. But again, it's a matter of educating the the user or the client on the chemistry of it all.
[00:28:17] So that's about what I can say on the topic. That's-
[00:28:22] Amber Stilwell: Yeah, that makes sense for the, end user to be a little intimidated by that. But I think that's where some of that bridging that gap between science and people can come into that space. So thank you all for your responses.
[00:28:39] Thinking about the existing space of harmful algal bloom mitigation and the future now. So our third question is, what does the future of harmful algal bloom mitigation look like, and what could successful scaled implementation of this technology enable? Michael we'll hear, from you first.
[00:29:05] Michael Corridan: Amber, in a word, it's mandatory. That's the future. To ignore this trajectory of HABs and hypoxia worldwide, you're smart people, you're researchers, you see this, that'd be like saying what elephant in the bathtub? This has been a 15, 20-year accelerating trajectory. Unless somebody got lucky and the wind shifted HABs, hypoxia is just a runaway train.
[00:29:34] Whether it's from warming and the oxygen expelling from the water, it's not breathing, whether it's driven by growth, area growth, more pollution whether it's driven by aquaculture. Where's all that protein gonna come from the planet for the next 50 years? We know it's aquaculture, yet that introduces a lot of water stressors.
[00:29:57] If you wanted in one word, which if you've asked me for an answer, you're saying, "Thank God, he gave me a one-word answer. It's mandatory." I'm not gonna let you get off that easy, though. I think the other exciting part about the future is a lot of the... Back to the funding side of this, there are some really smart people now in the water VC world.
[00:30:18] The Propellers, Brent Highland, Emerald, Catapult the great work John Robinson's doing at Mazarin looking at climate adaptation, recognizing that, hey, this is a bad problem. You may not be able to reverse it all. You better start adapting to it. So that's exciting. And I'm watching some of the strange bedfellows hooking up together.
[00:30:38] You're watching Xylem invest in Molier. Veolia's merged with Suez. Danaher spun off all its water toys into Veralto. There is a business recognition of how big this is and how much we have to get after it and the economics involved. Future as far as I'm looking at it, I think one of the biggest drivers for all of what we do is frankly gonna come from big data and big beverage.
[00:31:05] They've all set hard 2030 water positive goals. God bless them. You're not gonna get there by tuning up just a few small wetlands. You're gonna have to look at Erie. You're gonna have to look at Lough Neagh over in Northern Ireland, the fresh water supply to Belfast. These water offsets-- Let's go back to big data.
[00:31:25] They're gonna need better water offset stories. Great ideas that use little water are being rejected by the citizenry in certain areas. Unless they improve their water positive story, they're getting kneecapped. So there's-- What's really cool for what we do is economics are gonna drive it. This runaway trajectory is gonna drive it.
[00:31:44] You have to do something. Man, I could talk about this for a long time. Let me just say this. Besides big data, big beverage, all the water positive... By the way, BP's now water positive. Think about that for a second. You have other drivers for what we all do. You have swimmable cities coming on. You have the Euro River crisis and the pollution.
[00:32:05] You've got Red Sea Global investing a trillion dollars in the Red Sea. That investment's worth about three dollars if they lose their coral and the water health there. Desalination has to explode to keep up with the water needs. The ingress and egress issues around desal need what we all do. There's so many cool drivers, the future excites.
[00:32:26] And frankly, what you do, what Max does, what Trial Reservoirs does, these bridges, putting these things together and people together is just plain exciting. Back to my one-word answer, mandatory. It's gonna have to happen.
[00:32:43] Amber Stilwell: Thank you, Michael. Yes I, agree. And it-- we're in unprecedented times. And it's, an exciting place to be.
[00:32:54] And so I am curious, Lawrence, what is your take on the future of HAB mitigation and successful implementation?
[00:33:02] Lawrence Lambert: I can sum it up in a short paragraph. Why should lakes be any different from farms or oceans? And in agriculture, we already accept robotic platforms in the field. In marine sciences, we accept autonomous platforms surveying the deep ocean.
[00:33:20] And the same logic applies to inland waters. The future I see is fleets of autonomous robotic platforms operating continuously across lakes with cloud-based AI, as Kendall said, and directing where and where treatment occurs. So precision lake management modeled on precision agriculture has become for farming.
[00:33:46] Amber Stilwell: Thank you. Yes, that's absolutely true. And Kendall this kind of plays into some of your thoughts in this space in nutrient management and mitigation. So would you like to close out this question for us?
[00:34:00] Kendall Byrd: Yeah, of course. And of course, I echo what Lawrence said. We build robotics that are autonomous, that work on cloud-based systems that we can control anywhere.
[00:34:08] And so I definitely think that's how you get to that custom- customizable piece I talked about. But personally, I think the future is obviously stopping it at the root. We have to prevent this nutrients from coming in. And I think the issue there, though, is that's a lot easier said than done. You're talking about covering many jurisdictions different desires from different groups of people.
[00:34:30] And so it will take time and patience to get to that point. And in the meantime there has to be something kinda curbing the issue as is. And even if we stopped all the nutrients today, you'd have a hundred years plus of legacy nutrients still in these waterways causing problems. So you're not gonna just stop it by stopping the nutrients.
[00:34:47] As hard of a problem that is to solve, if we could, we would still have algal blooms. And so I think for those guys that are gonna kinda hold the wall until nutrients is completely removed and we get past some of this legacy issue proactive treatment is number one. The reason why algal blooms cause these hypoxic conditions is we allow them to get so bad and you treat them all at once.
[00:35:10] I worked in lake management prior to doing what I do now, and if we treated a one-acre pond, we would only treat a third of it each visit, because if you treat all of it at once, you create this hypoxic scenario. And the other one is, I think, targeted treatment. Lawrence mentioned this briefly, but there-- most systems currently that treat water are fixed in one place and bring all the water to that one unit.
[00:35:32] You're over-treating, in my opinion, and overusing resources such as electricity and wearing out your hardware pretty quickly. If you-- Most blooms originate in one location, and then wind patterns and these things spread them through the system. So if you can learn the system, learn the personality, proactively treat in those areas before spread you can really curb a lot of these issues, I think and let people swim in water without fear.
[00:36:00] Amber Stilwell: That's great. And I love that last statement that you made. That's something that I always try to drive home to my audiences and people that I work with enjoy, recreate without fear but be smart about it. And thinking about that lake or pond personality learning the the patterns of your water body and then predicting where that might-- where that bloom might go, where it might occur.
[00:36:26] But then in tandem with maybe some of these autonomous treatments and up-and-coming technologies might be the future. So we have reached the end of the panel questions, and we can certainly move into Q&A from audience members. If anyone from the audience would like to tr-- put questions in the Q&A I'll, go through and figure out which ones our panelists might, be most interested a-in answering.
[00:37:03] Or panelists, you're welcome to look at them yourselves, and if I miss one, let me know. But I think there's a really good starter question for us in the chat from someone named Jay. Jay, I hope I'm pronouncing your name right, but Jay asks, "Are there any low-cost LOT sensors that are available on the market?"
[00:37:26] Would anyone like to take that question, or maybe multiple?
[00:37:30] Kendall Byrd: I can definitely answer the low-cost sensor question really quickly, just 'cause of what we use. We use Atlas Scientific sensors. They're much cheaper. Now, I'm not gonna tell you that this is lab grade sensor, right? This isn't to replace the YSI sensors.
[00:37:44] But it will-- they require very low calibration intervals, so you don't have to do this every week. It can be every six months. And they will give you trustworthy data that will at least find, help you find these patterns. So Atlas Scientific, check it out.
[00:37:59] Amber Stilwell: Thanks, Kendall. And Mark asks a more of a specific biological question about cyanobacteria that is outside of my range, so maybe one of you can help.
[00:38:13] Mark asks, "What is the diurnal vertical profile of cyanobacteria?" I think more specifically he's asking when are they at the top of the water column, and how deep do they sink? My understanding is that because they can regulate their own buoyancy, they can move up and down in the entire water column.
[00:38:31] And that's based on sunlight availability. But please let me know if that is incorrect.
[00:38:38] Kendall Byrd: No,
[00:38:39] Amber Stilwell: I
[00:38:39] Kendall Byrd: think I would echo that answer, Amber. Cleaning for us early in the morning later at night, they'll be-- they're gonna be more concentrated on the surface. This is 'cause the CO2 is accumulated and they can go up.
[00:38:53] Midday they sink down. They don't wanna overcharge those photo systems and then even- they will s- progressively start building their way back up as the sun moves away. So exactly right.
[00:39:06] Lawrence Lambert: Yeah. And then there's of course the seasonal yearly migration of of algae. As in the, wintertime, early spring, you don't see algae blooms, so that is happening as days get longer and the sun light penetrates down to the bottom.
[00:39:25] So it's both seasonal and as Kendall says also a diurnal yeah
[00:39:32] Kendall Byrd: I think, Amber, I think the second part of that question was depth. I think five meters is pretty pretty average. Some systems could get deeper than that, but again, we work on pretty shallow systems,
[00:39:45] Michael Corridan: And Amber, I'd just like to add that you can handle the blooms that are in a water column, but unless you're also getting down into that sediment area a little bit, that-- a lot of people don't realize that sediment loading is much of the fuel for a subsequent algal bloom also.
[00:40:04] So I appreciate the specific answers on depth, but we're probably the fact... If you look at Erie, it's not particularly deep, is it? So how cool is that? We can actually, in nanobubbles that kind of go in every direction, we can also get down and address some of what's at the sediment layer. If you talk to the smart people on HABs, you'll realize that's much of the loading or fuel for these subsequent issues also.
[00:40:27] So there's the remediation, where is it at a particular time? You guys answered it perfectly. But unless you're also going down and addressing that sediment layer loading, you're not getting at much of the issues going forward.
[00:40:43] Amber Stilwell: Thank you. Thank you all three for your responses. This question is listed for Kendall, but anyone is welcome to respond.
[00:40:52] Could you elaborate what would treating a hotspot area look like? For example, how do we batch treat a small portion of a lake, and what kind of technologies would we use?
[00:41:04] Kendall Byrd: Yeah so what-- I'll start with what kind of technologies could you use. You could use ours. But in all seriousness like a, an example of a grant that we have that we're waiting responses on and working with Buckeye Lake.
[00:41:20] It's a larger system, right? We're partnered with Buckeye Lake working on this, is that they've told us very clearly that there's this fifteen-acre cove that and believe it or not, there's a river that feeds into this or some small creek system. And this fifteen-acre cove is where the bloom always occurs.
[00:41:36] The wind pushes it out, and it moves it down to the actual public beach there, and that's what results in their beach closures. And so pu- targeted sector-wise treatment would be talking to these individuals that have years on the job, not just relying on the data and AI as great as it is, but I really like listening to the old heads that have been here for fifteen years and understand the personality of the pond.
[00:41:56] And treatment would be starting early March, if not maybe a little earlier, deploying devices that do constant treatment on the surface to essentially redu... It's like the idea of a Roomba, right? I'm gonna s-- A Roomba's not the best sweeper or vacuumer, right? I'm a much better vacuum cleaner than the Roomba is, but the reason the Roomba beats me is it does it every day.
[00:42:20] And so the frequency matters. And so I would say high-frequency treatments in targeted locations where known blooms occur is what it looks like to treat something the size of, say, Buckeye Lake, by only maybe managing 50 acres of this multi-hundred acre system
[00:42:38] Amber Stilwell: Thanks, Kendall. What, Lauren, Sarah, Michael, would you like to add on to that?
[00:42:41] Lawrence Lambert: Yeah, Or me? Go ahead ... You can't, blindly jump into your lake and start thinking here's a hotspot." Every lake has its own signature, and it's important to profile your lake over the four seasons. Find it's a living, breathing machine, animal, and that you have to find out, f- figure out its signature.
[00:43:05] And then as Kendall says, then you can target the hotspots. So anyway, so there we go, yeah. And just going back to a previous question there, there's a company called Turner Designs in the Pacific Northwest, and they actually market a handheld device for for early detection of HABs
[00:43:33] Michael Corridan: If I might just augment what both those great responses covered.
[00:43:40] I think we all believe in what I'll call variability or specific horse for that course. In our case, we control the oxygen ozone mix. We- we're vessel-based also. You have to be able to go to where the problem is. That world of stationary or put something on the side of a pond, that just doesn't get it done.
[00:43:59] If it does get it done, maybe it's coming out at too strong. It's better to be out there spreading it around, going where you need it. Our case, we can do a bunch of things. We can get out there and firewall around it and work our way in. We can dwell in an area or we can fly through, whether we're looking at the severity of that event.
[00:44:19] Anything that's dump and run, there's no place for that anymore. You're guessing you got the right amount and you go. I think it has to be iterative. You're looking at the feedback, whether it's the smart buoy technologies. You have to respond to the specific event. In our case, we are on boats for that specific reason.
[00:44:36] We can dwell, we can revisit, we can encircle, we can lay down a firewall. Dump and run or single spot remediation doesn't have much of a place in what we're doing here. So I'd just like to echo my two co-panelists here. They're right.
[00:44:54] Amber Stilwell: Thank you. Thank you all three. And along those same lines, Ed asks about targeted treatment of small water bodies, and he would like to know, is there available space to consider an onshore system that withdraws water and continuously returns nutrient-free water to the pond or lake?
[00:45:15] Kendall Byrd: I guess I have a-- there's more questions there than I have an answer maybe, but I can definitely give you an answer. So A depending on where you're at it could be feasible, but something we found is that most individuals don't care for a permanent installation on their pond, right? The point of a pond is to look beautiful, and that's why at Caddis we don't use a docking station.
[00:45:35] We have a different way to overcome battery necessities. That's one. And then and then also some ponds don't have electrical ran to them. We take that for granted, but a lot of these small water bodies may be on farms or private residencies and don't actually have the ability to get electrical to them, or the budget just then becomes seven times fold because you're running electrical to the to the actual pond.
[00:45:59] The final comment would be is there's definitely people that would be interested in that, I'm sure, if you talk and ask around. But the systems we serve a lot of them are golf courses, and so this is habitual weekly, maybe multi-week use of nutrients running in, right?
[00:46:17] Because they're, fertilizing the turf, and these ponds are built specifically for catchment systems. They're, meant to be overloaded with nutrients. That's their job, actually, so that it doesn't go anywhere else. And I just-- as you I guess maybe think about that what is the use cycle of your product, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:46:36] But yeah, I think there's definitely people that would be interested in that ask around.
[00:46:43] Amber Stilwell: Thank you, Kendall. There are several questions about AI in the chat, so I'd like to move us in that direction. One is specifically asking about AI being used to define hotspots for treatment locations, and another is asking about AI being used to predict the occurrence and movement of red tides.
[00:47:05] So I think we can combine those two questions and have a discussion. What, does AI look like in this space? And Michael, you talked a little bit about AI, so maybe you'd like to take that first.
[00:47:16] Michael Corridan: First of all I am far from an expert in it, but I am a massive fan of the work that's being done in AI as far as predicting the conditions for blooms.
[00:47:26] Again, I've died and gone to heaven with everything with EO and AI. Miles Medina down in Florida is doing great work using AI to predict where it'll be. I think Florida one of the Florida universities is really out there. NASA is running large AI predictive technologies for Oman right now.
[00:47:48] You-- I've already bored you with enough with the fact that EO can pick up these things when they're the size of your office. Twenty days later, I watched it happen in San Francisco Bay a few years ago, went from the size of your garage to a f- bay-wide fish kill. We, any of us here could have intercepted that when it was the size of your garage.
[00:48:09] That's the criminal side of this. I can tell whoever the questioner is, there is just spectacular work going on in AI predictive bloom recognition. And by the way, if you miss it, the EO is so good now I mentioned twenty of them. We can get there when it's so small, it's almost as good. I better stop talking.
[00:48:34] That's how I look at AI.
[00:48:38] Amber Stilwell: That's great. Kendall, Lawrence, any other additional thoughts?
[00:48:41] Lawrence Lambert: Yeah. You gotta remember that AI is what I call an infinite library, and we have at our disposal Virginia Technology Tech has a mass, this massive library of of over 500 million harmonized observations across 17 variables and 21 lakes.
[00:49:06] And what AI can do is look at your profile, it may be a limited profile of your lake and to establish its signature. And AI will look at the data that's available and predict from what you've got from what has happened in the past. So AI is is the future of predicting blooms and telling you where to find hot spots
[00:49:37] Amber Stilwell: Thank you, Lawrence. Lawrence, while you're on, there is a question for you in the Q&A about your, the electrodes. The choice between aluminum electrodes and iron electrodes, and why choose aluminum instead of iron?
[00:49:56] Lawrence Lambert: That's very good. Yes. Iron yes, will combine very nicely with phosphorus and get iron phosphate, which will sink to the bottom.
[00:50:07] But this also will... the chemistry will come apart if the oxygen level is not optimal down on the bottom of the lake. And it's been tried and tested, but it's been discarded. And aluminum is the preferred compound, aluminum phosphate, which under a wide variety of oxygen conditions found at the bottom of lakes stays a, as a stable compound
[00:50:37] Amber Stilwell: Wonderful.
[00:50:37] Thank you. And along those same lines Dr. Sudhir is asking what DRP and nitrate sensors are used in Situ
[00:50:55] Kendall Byrd: I would just say we don't use DRP or nitrate on our system, so I can't really speak to what sensors. I do know YSI has them available though, although pricey
[00:51:06] Amber Stilwell: Thank you，田董。 There's a couple comments about NOAA and EPA's understanding of the regulatory and permitting issues. Felix wants to clarify their that they are working to clarify the requirements in order to facilitate both research and implementation of control technologies. So that's really, great information.
[00:51:31] Felix and an anonymous attendee also mentioned the NOAA Harmful Algal Bloom Control Technologies Initiative. And there is a link that if anyone is interested, we can drop that into the chat. Great to see agencies working together to make some of these procedures a little less painful.
[00:51:54] There is a question from Marsha about using biochar socks to slow down nutrients. So could they use those to slow down nutrients coming into their lake from two creeks and many swales? And I think the input is coming from several farms that surround their community. So any input on biochar socks and using them to reduce nutrients
[00:52:19] Lawrence Lambert: I, can actually say a little bit about that.
[00:52:23] We're actually one-on-one with a, small community in Pennsylvania called Silver Lake, and they actually They're, very astute at approaching the problem of algae blooms starting in their lake. And they actually did disperse similar bags in a stream, and but found that they at the end of the day it was not the solution because water would flow around them.
[00:52:58] The chemical was exhausted very fast, and it turned out it was not a good solution. That's why we introduced Stream Guard, where we actually diffuse aluminum ions into the water as it enters the lake
[00:53:18] Michael Corridan: I, I look at this, Amber, as again, horses for courses. Biochar has its play. In fact, we collaborate with a Australian company that makes what I'll call a reusable or recyclable bio- biochar. So it's a gyroid kind of sponge material, the same kind of massive surface area. I look at this as sometimes it's hard to know when you've filled it up or it's clogged or it's not working.
[00:53:43] So we use their material and frankly put it through a backwash or recyclability cell. But the idea of that huge surface area attracting and gathering toxins, it's hard not to like that. But it-- I also see that as part of more of a holistic approach where that's one part of this. If we looked at Lake Erie, I would take Lawrence's great technology and I would firewall those nutrients coming in from the Maumee River.
[00:54:12] We'd get out there and do our thing. We'd send Kendall to his pockets in there where there's small sections that we can get after this. I think the key here is there's not one technology. We are all convinced that we have the best, that we're entrepreneurs and that's what we do. But the right answer is gonna be horses for courses, the right blend.
[00:54:32] The reason hybrid cars are popular, you pick the best of both. So the one and done or the people who have the solution, no you don't. You have to be open to hybridization and a lot of these problems are way too big for one answer. It needs two, three or four. Biochar certainly has its place in this mix, and anybody who says not is wrong.
[00:54:58] Kendall Byrd: I would echo that, Michael. I was thinking when I was walking, getting prepared for this today that if a large lake the size of Lake Erie only has one vendor saying that they're taking care of everything, then that pond is not being taken care of.
[00:55:11] Michael Corridan: Right.
[00:55:11] Kendall Byrd: Or lake in that scenario.
[00:55:15] Michael Corridan: The hard part is who is gonna play God or who are the smart people that can put this together?
[00:55:19] I hope it's the smart people at the Pennsylvania Sea Grant or it is the Cleveland Water Alliance or its trial reservoirs. The hard part here is this a big problem always-- if it's big and it's been persistent, it's because it needs an interdisciplinary type of solution. If it was a one answer, it'd be fixed.
[00:55:39] Who are the bridgers? Who are the combiners? Who's putting these consortiums together? It's all on you, Amber. Get after it.
[00:55:48] Amber Stilwell: Thank you. Yes, and I, think this is a specifically very challenging topic because there is no silver bullet. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. And Kendall, I told you when we met I'm gonna use this, but like you said, every pond has a personality, as does every lake and every water body.
[00:56:08] So I think I'm gonna start to close out the conversation here because I think that's a great place for us to move into our final question, which is actually gonna come from me. And I am just curious, as I-- while I share my screen so I can talk about the next webinar in Max's wonderful series here I'm just curious if each of you could share the takeaways that you would like the audience members to walk away with from today.
[00:56:39] So what is the most important thing that you would like everyone on this call to be reminded of as they leave? Kendall, can we start with you?
[00:56:48] Kendall Byrd: Yeah I would just say that people are working on the problem, and it's gonna take a lot of people and a lot of intelligent individuals working on it, so collaboration's important.
[00:56:59] And not being scared to kinda share things and work together and fail together is incredibly important.
[00:57:08] Amber Stilwell: Thanks, Kendall. Lawrence or Michael, either one
[00:57:11] Lawrence Lambert: Yeah. Yes, Kendall said it right there. I think the audience has to realize that there's innovators out there, but there's a big barrier between the lake and the innovators, and it's called the gatekeepers. And somehow, somewhere somebody has to recognize that lakes are for everybody, and they offer an amazing recreational plus valuable water source.
[00:57:43] And if there's gonna be gatekeepers then how can we get innovation in there to solve the problems?
[00:57:52] Amber Stilwell: Thank you. And Michael
[00:57:55] Michael Corridan: Let me just plant an additional thought. Water restoration, water remediation is greenhouse gas reduction. Water bodies are probably 10 to 30% of the methane budget.
[00:58:06] They're a massive part of the nitrous oxide budget, particularly when you have dead zones. If you're fixing water, you are fixing GHG also. It's probably the ultimate twofer. The biggest carbon capture machine in the world captures 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. Lake Erie alone gives off 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents.
[00:58:31] That little E is because it's methane and nitrous oxide. My compatriots here gave you great answers. I think the biggest crime is the fact that there is a ultimate twofer out there, which is water remediation is GHG remediation. I think big data and big beverage are gonna step up. I'm excited for the future.
[00:58:52] I'm excited for the bridge people like yourselves. I love this space. Thank you.
[00:58:58] Amber Stilwell: Thank you. Thank you all Kendall, Lawrence, Michael. This has been an honor to moderate this amazing session. Thank you Max, for the opportunity. And we're closing us out right at 1:00. So before you leave today, don't forget to register for the next session, which is titled Innovations in Nutrient Mana- in Nutrient Mitigation on August 11th, also at noon.
[00:59:23] So have a wonderful rest of everyone's day, and thank you again for our panelists if we can give them a round of applause. Thank you very much.
[00:59:32] Kendall Byrd: Thanks everybody. Great to meet all
[00:59:33] Lawrence Lambert: you. Thank you Amber. Thank you Max.
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