[00:00:00] Max Herzog: Hello everyone. Welcome to the state of HABs mitigation, innovations and HABs mitigation. This is a two-part series that we at Cleveland Water Alliance are putting on alongside the Great Lakes HABs Collaborative, convened by the Great Lakes Commission. Today we'll be diving into a variety of technologies that are focused on mitigating harmful algal blooms, both specific technologies and the perspectives of folks, working in these areas on the broader field.
[00:00:38] Max Herzog: my name is Max Herzog. I'm Deputy Director of Programs and Partnerships with Cleveland Water. We're a nonprofit entity focused on supporting water technology innovation. The Great Lakes HABs Collaborative is a group of scientists, researchers and government agencies focused on generating science-based guidance, and communication around harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes.
[00:01:01] Max Herzog: So we're really excited to co-convene this session here today. One quick housekeeping note: This is a webinar format and so you as attendees will not be able to share your audio or video directly. Instead we ask that you drop your questions in the Q&A in the toolbar at the bottom of your screen.
[00:01:24] Max Herzog: Feel free to drop questions throughout the session as they come up. Our panelists may be able to respond via text to those questions, and we'll also save them for the Q&A section at the end, which will be moderated by our moderator. I do wanna make sure folks differentiate the Q&A is distinct from the chat.
[00:01:45] Max Herzog: It doesn't show up at the bottom of your screen. You can click that little more button, to see the Q&A. So we will go to Q&A first before chat for questions. With that, it's my great pleasure to introduce our moderator for today: Ryan Sorichetti is a Great Lakes research scientist with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.
[00:02:11] Max Herzog: and he will be moderating our panel today, so I'll hand it over now to Ryan to introduce the rest of our panelists.
[00:02:20] Ryan Sorichetti: Thanks very much, Max. Good afternoon everyone. As mentioned. My name's Ryan Sorichetti. I'm a Great Lakes research scientist and ecologist with the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks.
[00:02:31] Ryan Sorichetti: First of all, I'd like to thank the Cleveland Water Alliance and the Great Lakes commission for inviting me to moderate this session. I do sit as the Canadian co-chair for the Great Lakes Commission's harmful algal bloom collaborative. So, that partnered up with the work that I do at the Ontario Ministry.
[00:02:48] Ryan Sorichetti: I'm very excited and interested for our discussion and question period today with our panelists and speakers that we have. So, to get right to it, I'd like to first introduce each of the speakers, and then we'll get right into the questions and learn a little bit more about them, their work and how it relates to the topic that we're gonna be covering today.
[00:03:08] Ryan Sorichetti: So first we'll be speaking with Kendall Byrd, who's the founder at Caddis Tech. Hello Kendall. Next we have David Fung, who's the founding scientist at EM Fluids Incorporated. And, last but not least, we have EJ Neafsey, who is the Chief Water Scientist for LG Sonic, US. So with that, what I think we'll do is I'll pose a
[00:03:31] Ryan Sorichetti: First question to each of the panelists. And then through that question, it'd be really helpful to learn a little bit about your organization and exactly how your work relates to some of the things that we'll be speaking about today. But first of all, and maybe I'll ask Kendall first, can you speak to your perspective on the state of HABs mitigation approaches?
[00:03:51] Ryan Sorichetti: What have historical best practices looked like and how is new technology changing the conversation?
[00:03:58] Kendall Byrd: Hey everyone. Thanks Ryan for the question. From my perspective, I think, harmful algal bloom mitigation or management is currently very reactive and chemical based and has been historically. We can see this with the long usage of copper sulfate and almost every freshwater system that's been treated for harmful algal blooms.
[00:04:18] Kendall Byrd: In addition to that, I don't think current treatments can match the spatial and temporal variability that occur with Blooms. We know these can pop up in 24 hours. Completely move locations in the same amount of time. And so I think, in that Caddis Tech, we believe when new technology that can kind of match these limitations, that are basically non-chemical based and can handle that variable temporal and spatial, movement of algal blooms.
[00:04:44] Kendall Byrd: And so the way we're doing this at Caddis Tech is that we've installed UV reactors on aquatic drones that can detect and treat harmful algal blooms in real time. This also allows us and gives us the mobility to rapidly change location and treat different locations, within the same timeframe.
[00:05:06] Ryan Sorichetti: Thanks very much for that, Kendall. Very interesting. I'm sure that'll come up more in some of our later discussions when we talk about some of the approaches and limitations to that work. David, Can you please speak to your perspective on the state of habits mitigation approaches, and sort of what the path line of best practices has looked like and how technologies are changing that conversation?
[00:05:27] Ryan Sorichetti: Oh, you're muted there, David. Sorry.
[00:05:35] David Fung: Thank you Ryan. and, well good afternoon to everybody in the Eastern Time zone. Historically the focus has been on the algae themselves through chemicals and other algicidal methods. These methods offer short term aesthetic relief for smaller water bodies, but they don't address the excessive nutrients.
[00:06:01] David Fung: The root cause of algal blooms. Nature has well established carbon cycle processes to convert nutrients in the water body into the growth of aquatic animals through the food chain of phytoplankton and zooplankton. Algal blooms occur when human activities introduce excessive nutrients to overwhelm the converting capacity of the natural carbon cycle.
[00:06:27] David Fung: So at EM Fluids, the technology does not kill anything in the water body. It empowers the water body to double the converting capacity of the natural carbon cycle to direct excessive nutrients towards the growth of aquatic animals. By reducing the interfacial gas transfer, liquid film resistance, oxygen and carbon dioxide can be transferred into the water body at double the respective regular rate.
[00:06:54] David Fung: This prevents hypoxia at night or excessive peak pH during the day and maintains a balanced community of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and aquatic animals, a single 22 pound solar powered unit can remediate a 50 acre stagnant water body without the use of chemicals, grid power, infrastructure, or operating labor.
[00:07:20] David Fung: For slowly flowing water, A single unit has successfully remediated an average of 400 acres in a seven square mile water body within two to six weeks. Back to you, Ryan.
[00:07:32] Ryan Sorichetti: Thanks. Thanks David. That's very interesting. So very interesting. So making use of natural ecological processes to approach the issue of harmful algal blooms. Thank you for that.
[00:07:43] Ryan Sorichetti: Very interesting. and EJ, can you speak to your perspective on the state of HABs mitigation approaches, including some of the historical best practices, what they've looked like, and how new technologies might be changing this conversation?
[00:07:56] E.J. Neafsey: Absolutely. Thank you Ryan, and thank you for having me. So I often like to think of lake management like a hospital.
[00:08:02] E.J. Neafsey: So there's a wide variety of vendors that provide equipment for a wide variety of different issues, all attending to the health of the patient. In this case it is lakes and other water bodies. But the key is that we want all solutions to be driven by real time data. So we can right-size them to treat the conditions that are present.
[00:08:22] E.J. Neafsey: Really, at the end of the day, just like in the healthcare world, the goal is to make sure that nature can manage itself as much as possible. So LG Sonic’s, scalable data-driven ultrasonic treatment pushes primary producer competition back to its normal ecological envelopes. And this enables mitigation without unintended consequences.
[00:08:43] E.J. Neafsey: Of course another focus area should be extracting nutrients that are present in water bodies to return them outside of the watershed to practical use. And this can drive more complete and sustainable nutrient cycles, as well as drive the circular economy that we all want to establish.
[00:09:03] Ryan Sorichetti: All right. Very interesting as well, EJ. Thanks so much for that. So, already we can see diversity in approaches, and perspectives on HAB mitigation strategies. and so with that in consideration, maybe we can speak to some of the limitations, either with the technologies that you're aware of or those that you.
[00:09:21] Ryan Sorichetti: directly work with, and EJ since I have your attention already, what limitations, risks, and other barriers stand in the way of implementing these solutions at scale? So what have you observed, that might cause promising mitigation projects to fail?
[00:09:39] E.J. Neafsey: So really at the end of the day, we want to make sure we're all speaking the same language, and that language is often money.
[00:09:45] E.J. Neafsey: So we need better econometric models that can capture the return on investments that we can get from ecosystem service investments. So this could help ensure that the KPIs we use are all going to be smart, and this can incentivize more proactive and effective investments in natural resource management.
[00:10:07] Ryan Sorichetti: All right. Thank you EJ. Kendall, what limitations, risks, and other barriers stand in the way of implementing solutions that might be appropriate at scale?
[00:10:18] Kendall Byrd: Yeah. So to kind of play on what EJ already said, and maybe adjacent to that is, I think, it's simply put is that decision makers have other things they prioritize over management of harmful algal blooms.
[00:10:32] Kendall Byrd: some of these would be economic development, public health, the new park that's gonna rake in a bunch of money when people come to visit the city. These things are usually prioritized over mitigation of harmful algal blooms because currently it's expensive. And, it doesn't always work 'cause they're really complex phenomena that occur in nature.
[00:10:51] Kendall Byrd: And so, sometimes it's simply just easier to close down the beach and miss two to three days of revenue from the beach and then reopen it once it goes away. And so I think speaking to some of these policy makers and decision makers on why it's important, why we need to manage this and that if we don't start managing it, the future's gonna look
[00:11:08] Kendall Byrd: A lot worse, there'll be much more beach closings, much more issues. Maybe then some of these solutions or maybe all these solutions in tandem can be implemented to effectively manage algal blooms.
[00:11:21] Ryan Sorichetti: Okay. Thank you, thank you for that. David, do you have any comments on any of the limitations, risks, and barriers that might stand in the way of implementing some of these solutions that will be appropriate for the scale that are required for them to be effective?
[00:11:36] David Fung: I think again, following Kendall's comments, the issue is often government policy. The most compelling approach for government is generally to do nothing. Resources are only allocated once HABs become a political or health problem. We've seen this scenario, in the Great Lakes, but also in many countries around the world.
[00:11:58] David Fung: Change only starts to happen when drinking water is threatened. Once a challenge is taken seriously, the least perceived risky option trumps all else, because failed innovations are not a career builder. So unfortunately this is usually algicides, which are effective aesthetically. But if that algae sinks to the bottom, it decomposes, sucks up more dissolved oxygen, and releases the nutrients right back into the water body.
[00:12:27] David Fung: They don't address the excessive nutrients issue, the underlying causes of HABs. So the successful deployment of the cost effective EM Fluids technology to empower natural processes to suppress HABs in large water bodies around the world is starting to change this narrative. Seeing its believing. Thank you.
[00:12:47] David Fung: Right.
[00:12:49] Ryan Sorichetti: Okay. Thank you David. So one of the common themes that I picked up through all three of the responses there were very much directed at either processes or decision making power or policies that are implemented in place. And I was wondering, and I'll open this up to, to all three of you, and any of you or all of you can, can comment if you like, but I was wondering what is one.
[00:13:09] Ryan Sorichetti: Sort of strategy to get through that decision making hurdle or the policy driven, we heard a lot about, government processes and, and what happens or what triggers a response when a bloom is observed, where we have a repeating issue of harmful algal blooms. But do you find, or do you think that some of the success might be found in more awareness?
[00:13:32] Ryan Sorichetti: Is it showcasing that technologies can actually be effective at a scale that is required? or do you think it's just more appropriate knowledge transfer from what the science community is learning and transferring that over to those that are making those decisions and putting the processes in place?
[00:13:49] Ryan Sorichetti: And I don't really have this in mind for any particular panelist today either. Any of you have an idea or a response to that? I'd love to hear it.
[00:13:59] David Fung: Well, I'll, I'll jump in, if I could. I think knowledge transfer is critical. Because innovation very often gets stuck in the laboratory. And as I mentioned earlier for the officials, taking risk is not a career builder.
[00:14:18] David Fung: So, but restoring the power of nature will always be the most cost effective and ecologically balanced approach. This is the foundation of a circular economy. The fusion needs to involve fundamental policy shifts towards reducing entry of excessive nutrients into the ecosystem, which is the subject of the next webinar.
[00:14:42] David Fung: But in the meantime, based on the successful experience in Canada, Louisiana, South America, and Asia, deploying the solar power self-contained EMF device or similar technologies on existing navigation bouys one mile apart, along the affected shoreline, will empower the natural carbon cycle to suppress HABs in very large water bodies.
[00:15:06] David Fung: Like Lake Erie. The performance can be easily monitored by satellite images and cellular connected continuous data loggers. So we need to center large ecosystem management with minimum human intervention. Thank you, Ryan.
[00:15:23] Ryan Sorichetti: Thank you, David. That's great. Kendall or EJ, did you have any ideas?
[00:15:28] Kendall Byrd: Yeah, Ryan, I can speak to it and, just simply put, I think if you can talk to a decision maker and speak to the simplicity of implementation and then how low at what a low cost that you can implement at, then the, there's not much of an argument.
[00:15:43] Kendall Byrd: It's kind of just like, when can you get started? If you can do it simply and you can do it at the cost that they want, then there's not much negotiation that needs to occur after that. 'cause you're solving a problem within the budget and in an easy way.
[00:15:59] Ryan Sorichetti: Okay. Very good. Thank you for that. and maybe just focusing a little bit more on the issue of scale. I was wondering if some of you can at least comment on how your work or work that you're familiar with is actually getting that. The scope and scale of the mitigation that's required because as in some instances, an entire water body, like a small inland lake, might undergo a harmful algal bloom occurrence, and it might affect the entire lake.
[00:16:25] Ryan Sorichetti: Whereas in particular Great Lakes there may be only specific or certain areas that are more or less prone to harmful algal blooms or excessive growth of algae. so if it is tied in with pitching the right ideas to other policy makers or government agencies, how, how do we focus on that scale to show that it is the work that's being done to improve these mitigation technologies are really focusing on the appropriate scale?
[00:16:55] Kendall Byrd: For us at Caddis, it's swarm technology. So with a single drone we can clean say a smaller inland lake or pond, three to five acres. But say you want to clean something like, Sandusky Bay, much larger, right? We know this thing has harmful algal blooms that occur yearly, almost. We're lucky if we go a year without seeing one.
[00:17:16] Kendall Byrd: And so with something like this, a newer technology that is kind of being used in, I would say almost any industry is, the idea of multiple small drones, that all can communicate and all talk and work together to fix an issue. So, an example would be, say you, you drop 15 of –we like to call our, our aqua drone “Manta”.
[00:17:36] Kendall Byrd: So say we drop 15 Manta units into this bay. They're all patrolling their own sectors, but then when one finds a problem area, we can all converge on this sector. So you get faster, incredibly efficient cleaning, and then it's back to patrolling so you can cover a large area and then really focus treatment as needed to prevent these blooms from ever getting outta hand.
[00:17:59] David Fung: I think in our case, if you remember that I said that with a single unit floating a tidal navigation bouy, it can treat 50 acres of water. And basically it takes excessive nutrients, converts them into growth of the aquatic animals, and you would not be able to see any algal blooms.
[00:18:22] David Fung: Because nature's taken back control. And for flowing water for slowly flowing water. As I said early on, we can do 400 acres with one single unit floating in the water. So from a scale perspective, our technology is basically using nature's power and by doubling its ability then, nature becomes dominant and algal bloom will not, it will simply be suppressed.
[00:18:57] E.J. Neafsey: And then from LG Sonic's perspective, we have a buoy technology that can manage 20 hectares or 50 acres. So the answer for larger bodies of water is just to add more buoys. And because we have water quality sensing on most of those buoys, we can get a nice representative sample of what the water quality dynamics are across the water body.
[00:19:17] E.J. Neafsey: And by adding multiple buoys, we've added up to, I think about 50 buoys. So we can cover thousands of hectares using our technology and get a really good idea of what's happening with the lake. And we also use things like remote sensing. And other forms of observation too, to inform our technology and inform our management.
[00:19:41] Ryan Sorichetti: Okay. Very good. So those are excellent responses on how, you, you, you deal with the scope and scale, factor. And I guess just on the shoulders of that, one of the things that I was very interested in when I was learning a little bit about each of you and your work in the context of all the broader mitigation technologies that are underway in development.
[00:20:00] Ryan Sorichetti: I'm always interested in the unintended consequences, and I've heard each of you in various ways speak to the different ways in which unintended consequences are relatively avoided. So Kendall, for example, you're working with UV irradiance, and so there might be some risk to other zooplankton or phytoplankton that might not be harmful.
[00:20:22] Ryan Sorichetti: Bloom species. David, there's the using natural ecological processes to stimulate the growth of other animals and biota. But I've always been wondering, how, how, how do we ensure that we're not stimulating the wrong group? We've learned a lot from things like the ocean iron fertilization, that that can sometimes happen.
[00:20:42] Ryan Sorichetti: So that is very much a factor. And then EJ. With the Sonication, I would imagine that there would be other members of the Trophic Food Web that might be impacted through sonication exposure. And maybe just while you were the most recent to speak, do you have any comments on how those unintended consequences for yours and maybe even other emerging technologies can be mitigated?
[00:21:05] E.J. Neafsey: Absolutely. So it's one of the important things about our approach to ultrasound is we do use a low power solution. So it's not gonna cause cavitation, it's not gonna break apart cells or get cytotoxin into the environment. We might, we wanna make sure that those cells are intact, that they can sink to the bottom of the lake and can get processed by the nanoflora that are there.
[00:21:25] E.J. Neafsey: And they have the ability to really process those sino cytotoxins to safer BRI products. So that's a good thing. Also because it's low power, it doesn't have any impact on the other primary producers, especially from the zooplankton perspective. So we have done some research that shows that.
[00:21:45] E.J. Neafsey: There is no gradient of reproductive success with proximity to the transmitter. So that's definitely a positive. And because we've reset the primary producer population from cyanobacteria dominance, for example, to green algae dominance, that's a lot more bioavailable to the other primary producers, and you tend to see a really positive trophic cascade all the way up to fish, fisheries, and humans.
[00:22:10] E.J. Neafsey: And one of the things that our operations team often sees when they go out to service the buoys when the transmitters are on the fish really do like to congregate underneath the buoys and use 'em as shade habitat, so they're not bothered by it whatsoever. And really, as I say, the biggest risk to fish is that they're gonna be more subject to targeting by the local heron because the water quality is a lot clearer, so the fishing is a lot better.
[00:22:38] Ryan Sorichetti: Very interesting and good. Thanks for that. And, since I did bring this up, I do wanna give each of you the chance to comment on this, just to kind of highlight some of these, because I think that's a very positive outlook for some of the emerging technologies, different ways that we do find benefit in these.
[00:22:53] Ryan Sorichetti: So, maybe David, do you have any comment on that?
[00:22:56] David Fung: Yes. I think that, as I said, that nature really is very capable of balancing itself. It's only that our activity just upsets that process. So if we look at the water body suffering from eutrophication –in the morning pH may be seven and a half to eight, but with the excessive nutrients, the intense photosynthesis during the day by 6:00 PM the pH could be nine or 10 and, and that.
[00:23:28] David Fung: pH, high pH would suppress, the zooplankton know, Daphnia doesn't like pH, about 8.5, and you get over 10. Even copepods are now in trouble and without the zooplankton. Then all of a sudden you get algal bloom, the fundamental predator. So you upset the natural carbon cycle. But on top of that, when we look at the issue of HABs.
[00:23:56] David Fung: It's cyanobacteria that is key to creating the issue. And cyanobacteria are different from other algae. They are very efficient in using ammonia. Not as efficient at using nitrate. So if we can maintain a pH peak below 8.5, that means the nitrified bacteria that provides the ammonia oxidizing enzyme to convert ammonia to nitrate.
[00:24:26] David Fung: Can now thrive, and, and if more are only converted to nitrates that suppresses the competitiveness of designer bacteria and allow diatoms and green algae to dominate and that restores the food chain. So I think to answer your earlier question is that we restore nature's balance. Then I think then it makes the whole issue of HABs become a much smaller issue in the process.
[00:24:57] Ryan Sorichetti: All right. Thank you David. And Kendall, do you have any comment on some of the strategies that might be undertaken to avoid unintended consequences or have any comment on the broader mitigation strategies and how they do?
[00:25:09] Kendall Byrd: Ryan, a few comments, I can go through pretty quickly, but we're a relatively new company, so we're exploring this actually right now.
[00:25:17] Kendall Byrd: But, we found kind of our niche in that some people don't really care about the ecological stability in their ponds, especially some of these inland freshwater bodies. And so we've started there with our implementations. An example of this would be golf courses where we don't want people fishing. We just want aesthetics and we don't want any type of health risk.
[00:25:35] Kendall Byrd: To this group of people that would be considered high risk due to age and proximity to the water body. So we started cleaning there, and over the course of an entire year collected microbiome data of multiple sites here in Columbus that we’re cleaning. And so we hope to analyze that and see not just the UV’s effect on the
[00:25:57] Kendall Byrd: Algae that we're fixing both eukaryotic and prokaryotic, but also some of these other unintended microorganisms that would be present. What we want to see is this idea that if we reduce this cyanobacteria or eukaryotic algae by 50%, are we doing 50% across the board? If we're doing that, then this is the idea of a haircut or cutting grass.
[00:26:19] Kendall Byrd: We have no problem with trimming grass, as long as we don't just bald it right in certain spots. If we look at that data though, and we see massive shifts in abundance between certain genres, then we see that we are affecting certain species of microorganisms more acutely than maybe the cyanobacteria.
[00:26:37] Kendall Byrd: And so that's what we're doing currently to mitigate this problem is basically being intelligent about where we put the systems, collecting data for those systems before we ever step into something that is ecologically important, like lake Erie. And then, as far as macroorganisms, our UV reactors are completely enclosed behind two filter screens, with an opening about the size of a dime.
[00:26:58] Kendall Byrd: So you have to go through two, fine mesh filters and then into this tiny opening. And so fish and macro animals can't enter the system to even get to the reactors.
[00:27:09] Ryan Sorichetti: It's very helpful. Thank you. That's a great response. Thank you all very much for that. Just before we move on to the third question, I just wanted to remind everybody that if you do have any comments or questions, please make sure to put them in the Q&A box that's at the bottom of your screen there.
[00:27:23] Ryan Sorichetti: I'll be monitoring it throughout the discussion here and I know that the panelists can all respond directly to that as well. and if there's any other comments, put them in as well. And, we'll get to those towards the end of the discussion here. but just to get to the final of our sort of three questions that we were posed.
[00:27:42] Ryan Sorichetti: and David, maybe I'll start with you. What does the future of HAB mitigation look like? What could successful scaled implementation of this technology enable?
[00:27:54] David Fung: Well, I think that it is really a case of seeing and believing. Because, very often we all have theoretical projections and the fact that now we are remediating large water bodies, eight square miles in, in Thailand, 10 square miles in Indonesia, in Argentina, and smaller water bodies in Canada and Louisiana.
[00:28:27] David Fung: And these demos hopefully would open up the Great Lakes to start thinking about, using the technology, and try them out. And because of our ability to do this without the need for chemicals, infrastructure, grid power, and the performance can be monitored through satellite images, publicly available.
[00:28:54] David Fung: and several connected remote sensing data loggers. It makes it much easier for very large scale deployment. And as I said, that if we would deploy it one mile apart, in fact if they're too close together, it would interfere with each other. Using existing navigation bouys.
[00:29:21] David Fung: So we are really creating a technology where it makes it very simple, for people to try them out and within two to six weeks, and they will actually start to see the results, especially if they monitor the pH and they'll find that the ability to move carbon dioxide from the air into the water body during the day and suppress the peak is a fundamental mechanism.
[00:29:47] David Fung: To suppress algal bloom and protect the zooplankton population. Thank you.
[00:29:53] Ryan Sorichetti: That's great, David. Thank you. Kendall, what does the future of HAB mitigation look like?
[00:30:00] Kendall Byrd: Yeah. So, at Caddis Tech, what we think is, and I'll use an analogy here, is that at least me personally when I go grocery shopping, I hate having to go to three different grocery stores.
[00:30:10] Kendall Byrd: It's annoying. It's not efficient. And then, you might gawk at certain prices 'cause the other place was a little cheaper. And so what we think is that we can put all this into a single platform. Like why make Lake Management this incredibly difficult and intricate process when we could provide a platform that can do all of this.
[00:30:28] Kendall Byrd: And so with Manta, we like to say that there's monitoring prevention and treatment all in a single device. And even if you don't need the treatment, we can still send the device out to collect water quality data, not just in a specific location, but across the entire water body.
[00:30:44] Kendall Byrd: you need bathymetry mapping. Well, the system's modular. Let's pop off the UV reactors when we can go map the entire pond. Now we have depth profiles, water quality data that spatially extend over the entire water body, not just one region or one bay. And with this data, you can improve not only our treatment, but.
[00:31:02] Kendall Byrd: Provide this to those decision makers and say like, man, look how great this is. Now we know where we need to put resources and now I can give you a real budget instead of just asking let's hope we get this money today. Right.
[00:31:16] Ryan Sorichetti: Very interesting. So I was gonna ask everybody, but unintended benefits, but you've both so far hit on a couple of those in your responses to this question, so that's great as well. EJ, what does the future of HAB mitigation look like and what could successful scaled implementation of this technology enable?
[00:31:35] E.J. Neafsey: So we want HAB communities be empowered with data. They need to make decisions about their lakes. So you can't manage what you don't measure. We also want to make sure that we can combine real-time data with local knowledge. And local knowledge is so extremely important to unleash national capital and power economic development for more prosperous communities.
[00:31:55] Ryan Sorichetti: Yeah, very interesting. So the community perspective as well. Thanks very much for that. There's lots of options as we've highlighted today on some of the mitigation strategies and some of the approaches. And I'll ask another question open to all the panelists. Any of you can respond if you like. but do we see the future of HABs mitigation as
[00:32:21] Ryan Sorichetti: A single strategy, a compliment of strategies, a grouping of efforts, multiple mitigation technologies developed, or do you feel that we should focus on one sort of effort, and refine that so that it's scaled and, and maybe, maybe the scale and the appropriateness of the scale is what determines that.
[00:32:43] Ryan Sorichetti: But how do we see sort of the consortium of technologies and engineering technologies that are coming out of all the approaches to addressing some of the HABs issues that we're experiencing in lakes.
[00:32:56] Kendall Byrd: I can speak on this really fast, but I think, with something as adaptable as algal blooms and as intricate
[00:33:05] Kendall Byrd: it would, it would be almost impossible to say that a single person has the solution to fix everything, especially the size, the scale of ponds. Water bodies are so dynamic from one acre up to something the size of Lake Erie. And so my perspective is that you have kind of this consortium of people that have great solutions and they really truly know where they're applicable and where they should go.
[00:33:26] Kendall Byrd: And you maybe drop this kind of facade of pride and work together to actually make a difference in the world. And so, simply put, I think it's multiple solutions all working together for the same cause.
[00:33:39] Ryan Sorichetti: Thanks, Kendall. Did everyone else have any comments on that?
[00:33:47] David Fung: I think one of the questions that was posed on the Q&A was that when you may not have excessive nutrients, HABs can still happen. And so again, I think that, none of us would say that a single solution is the approach because there are always different circumstances under which, if somebody, like in China, when the officials are coming to visit, your area, having a solution, six weeks away is not
[00:34:20] David Fung: Really useful. So then what do you do? You put, chemicals in, you clear out the whole thing, everybody's happy. Well then you worry about the rest. But, but I think overall, our view is that empowering nature to take back control is fundamental. So even in waters without excessive nutrients, if HABs occur.
[00:34:46] David Fung: It's because the conditions allow the harmful algal bloom to dominate. And as I said, the cyanobacteria is one of the key actors and you've deprived the cyanobacteria of the ammonia and allow diatoms in green algae to take over. Whether you have excessive nutrients or not is not really the critical question.
[00:35:10] David Fung: So having nitrifying bacteria provide among the oxidizing enzymes is critical in suppressing cyanobacteria bloom. So again, depending on the needs of this situation, the occasions and a combination of technology would come into play.
[00:35:34] Ryan Sorichetti: Okay. Thanks very much David.
[00:35:44] Ryan Sorichetti: Okay. So that's all the primary questions that we had for discussion today. I'm gonna take a look at the chat here, and see what we have. There's a number of questions in the chats, or sorry, in the Q&A box. So if you do have any questions for Q&A, please put them in there. and, maybe I'll
[00:36:00] Ryan Sorichetti: Pose a few here, to our panelists. There are, there are some that are directed. So, David, there's a question for you here. I understand that HABs are linked to excess nutrients, however, there are also occurrences of HABs in oligotrophic or low nutrient lakes. It sounds to me like your HABs mitigation strategies are designed for eutrophic or nutrient rich systems.
[00:36:22] Ryan Sorichetti: But could you speak to how this approach could be adapted to address HABs in oligotrophic lakes where nutrient and bloom drivers differ significantly?
[00:36:31] David Fung: Well, as I described earlier on, the issue really is ammonia. And, if you allow the nitrifying bacteria to thrive, nitrifying bacteria are aerobic.
[00:36:47] David Fung: They're very selective. They need a pH below 8.5. Those are the conditions that you need to provide it so that the nitrifying bacteria can provide the ammonia oxidizing enzyme to convert ammonia to nitrate, so it doesn't have to be excessive nutrients. It is a balance of the nutrients. If you deprive the cyanobacteria of ammonia, and allow the other species to dominate, then you restore the food chain and the nutrients will go away in the forms of more aquatic animals.
[00:37:25] Ryan Sorichetti: Okay. Thank you David. We have a question here for all of the panelists, and any or all of you can respond. It feels like most HAB solutions right now are about fixing the problem in the water once it is already there. But what about stopping it at the source, like tackling nutrient runoff, sediment buildup, and land use issues without those upstream fixes,
[00:37:46] Ryan Sorichetti: Aren't we just treating the symptoms over and over instead of actually solving it?
[00:37:52] Kendall Byrd: Yeah, Ryan, I can speak to this. So yeah, I think you're right. I think we do have to currently fix the problem in the water. And the reason why is the things you just listed off, you're talking about land management, you're talking about different counties, different cities, different states, all inputting into this system.
[00:38:10] Kendall Byrd: So that is a much larger problem that will take many years to solve. put some, that reason due to its political ties and things that just take time to be changed. And so there needs to be a barrier that can prevent these blooms from occurring and harming people until that solution can be fixed.
[00:38:30] Kendall Byrd: And then kind of a flip to that is that not only is that such an intricate problem that spans so many states and so many regions, but also ground transportation of this nutrients is already in your groundwater system and that's gonna take 50 years plus to get back into the water system. So you're gonna be experiencing these bloom, even if you stop all the nutrient input right now, you still have it moving through your groundwater and it's gonna still input into your system.
[00:38:55] Kendall Byrd: So you need management of the water right now, and also management of the nutrient input, my perspective.
[00:39:06] Ryan Sorichetti: Thanks Kendall. I see that Max has his hand up, but did anyone else have a response to that before I move over to Max?
[00:39:14] E.J. Neafsey: Yeah, I just want to add that with a warming world, we're able to do more with less in terms of nutrients.
[00:39:20] E.J. Neafsey: And there was a study in Ontario that showed that for 26% of the lakes, which had harmful algal blooms were actually oligotrophic. So we are seeing, blooms in cases where nutrients are very limited, but I mean, it's obvious, it's true that nutrient management is essential.
[00:39:43] E.J. Neafsey: Thanks, EJ.
[00:39:45] David Fung: I think in our case our strategy of managing very large water reservoirs with nutrient input is to place our units actually up at the estuary. And if we can actually convert the excessive nutrients into the food chain before they start contaminating the large water reservoir.
[00:40:09] David Fung: And this is what we are doing in Argentina. And also in Indonesia. And that worked out to be a much better strategy than allowing the whole water body to be contaminated and then trying to treat a very, very large water body.
[00:40:28] Ryan Sorichetti: Thank you, David. Max, did you have anything to add or,
[00:40:33] Max Herzog: yeah. Apologies for interjecting in the panel, but just to, to plug as well, and I will at the end again, that. The other, the kind of companion discussion, webinar discussion that we'll be having on October 15th. We'll also focus on some of the technology side of nutrient mitigation and looking at what are the innovations in that area as well.
[00:40:53] Ryan Sorichetti: Thanks, Max. That's great. Okay, so I have another one for the whole group here. Have you considered how treatments would impact the extent of dead zones and overturn of freshwater bodies? Any possible unintended consequences?
[00:41:11] David Fung: Well, actually, we have actually experienced that because, in many water bodies because of thermocline, the oxygen from the upper water layer, epilimnion could not really go beyond.
[00:41:31] David Fung: The thermocline. And what we have found, in this case in Thailand, is that by having a well oxygenated water body, when the seasonal turnover comes around, the mixing of the anoxic water at the bottom with the upper layer would come up with an average oxygen content that was high enough to support the fish population without creating massive fish kills.
[00:42:00] David Fung: So we see this kind of water turnover in Canada and in the US as well. but it's more intense in some cases in the tropics when there are very hot suns, like in Israel, and the inland part of Brazil, and so forth. So the strategy is that you really need to expand the upper oxygenated layer and keep them well oxygenated.
[00:42:27] David Fung: So when the temperature starts to change, when the turnover comes around, there has to be enough dissolved oxygen in the water body to support the life of the aquatic animals.
[00:42:44] Ryan Sorichetti: Great. Thank you, David. Did anyone else have comment?
[00:42:50] E.J. Neafsey: Yeah, so one of the things that we observe as the Secchi depth improves and increases is that dissolved oxygen is able to diffuse a lot more effectively throughout that entire water column. So when that turnover happens, there's a much more good oxygen state, so that it's much more resilient to turnover events.
[00:43:14] Ryan Sorichetti: Thanks, EJ.
[00:43:18] Ryan Sorichetti: Okay. I have another question here for the entire group. Is there any concern or effect from various technologies presented if used at or near water intakes for municipal drinking water systems?
[00:43:31] E.J. Neafsey: So that's actually one of the more classical applications for us at LG Sonic. So, we have big cost centers in terms of plant expenses.
[00:43:40] E.J. Neafsey: So maximizing the length of runtime for absorption media, filtration media, and reducing the time that it takes to maintain those is also gonna be really effective. So we often see with our technology that by reducing the biomass, that it's going through those, those filtration technologies, that we are able to get those equipment to last longer and that there's a lot less hours that are involved in maintaining it.
[00:44:10] E.J. Neafsey: So definitely it is beneficial for water treatment plan operators in that regard.
[00:44:17] David Fung: We have, deployed our units in the drinking water reservoirs in Indonesia. And we actually have now operating data to demonstrate that by reducing the viscosity and surface tension of the water, we are accelerating the agglomeration of suspended solids and with reduced viscosity, higher settling terminal velocity.
[00:44:41] David Fung: So we end up with less material going into the water treatment plant and together with the suppression of algal bloom, and as EJ mentioned, and with fewer biomass going into the system, and lower, pressure drop across the filters, we've demonstrated we can actually save the pumping, power requirement.
[00:45:09] David Fung: Very consistently. And so it's not only drinking water, it's also in desalination water plants. But we are pumping very large volumes of water, and a savings of a few percentage will amount to half a million dollars for a desalination plant in the Middle East.
[00:45:32] Kendall Byrd: Ryan, just to piggyback on them, basically, at water intake points is where we would like to place these things. We were talking about the issue of scalability. Well, why clean the whole water body if the kind of problem area or what you wanna make sure is clean is coming into a water intake pipe.
[00:45:49] Kendall Byrd: And so we can focus and localize our treatment into those areas. If whether that's to fit into budget or to fit into practice. That's doable, kind of based on what EJ and David said as well.
[00:46:04] Ryan Sorichetti: Very good. Those are, those are great responses. Thanks all for that. HABs frequency is increasing with warmer waters.
[00:46:11] Ryan Sorichetti: Are we innovating with climate adaptation in mind or are we just playing catch up with bigger blooms each year?
[00:46:19] David Fung: I think from our perspective, we are operating over very large temperature zones. EM Fluids is now on all six continents, and by the way, EM is not electromagnetic. I think a lot of people equate it to that.
[00:46:36] David Fung: EM is “equilibrium”. Modulated, because our technology is basically driving everything back into equilibrium. If the system is not off equilibrium the unit would do nothing. It's only when you have a deficit of dissolved oxygen, a deficit of carbon dioxide, then the unit would then accelerate the process back towards equilibrium.
[00:47:02] David Fung: And that's how we empower nature. And so for warmer water, it has less ability to hold oxygen. but on the other hand, if we can accelerate the transfer across the interfacial, the barrier. By lowering the liquid film resistance, then the weather's warm cooler water, we are driving the system back to equilibrium and nature will then, back take back control.
[00:47:31] Ryan Sorichetti: Thanks David.
[00:47:32] Kendall Byrd: Yeah. For us, we've definitely, we're definitely thinking about climate change and what this is doing to warming our waters and so on. For us, the way that we've kind of done this is we definitely don't play catch up. you wouldn't call Caddis tech if your pond looks like turf.
[00:47:47] Kendall Byrd: You call us to drop in our unit here in Ohio, early March, and then you just never have the issue of a harmful algal bloom occurring. So, we don't deal with maybe a more intense one of these things 'cause we just never let it happen. I guess an easy analogy is that, like a Roomba for water is the best way to explain it, right?
[00:48:06] Kendall Byrd: Like, I don't have to clean my house a hundred percent if I do it every single day. Eventually it'll be clean in a week and then it stays clean because of the frequency that I can meet of treatment, not because of the intensity of that treatment.
[00:48:22] E.J. Neafsey: Yeah, and we take a similar approach too, so we're more of a proactive solution. And that's also the power of real time data collection, is that we're able to respond to conditions as they change. And of course, as an organization, we're always driven by the process of continuous improvement.
[00:48:39] E.J. Neafsey: So we're, we're in it for the long haul and it's, the climate changes, we're gonna match it.
[00:48:46] Ryan Sorichetti: Very good. Thank you all for that. We just have two more questions in the Q&A box here, and they're both related to economics and incentives. So first I would ask, could nutrient credit markets work in parallel with carbon markets to fund HABs prevention? Does anyone have an opinion on that?
[00:49:06] Kendall Byrd: Yeah. I think simply put, if you can accurately and systematically quantify nutrient credits, then yes. But the problem, we've seen this actually with carbon credits already, is how do you make a standard and who believes that? and I think that would be kind of the biggest thing to overcome.
[00:49:22] Kendall Byrd: But Sure. I mean, we see out west. Like with water banks where these people trade excess water to the next state. I mean, I think this idea of credits is great and it creates this circular economy around an issue, which is a beautiful thing. But standardizing how you quantify credits and making people actually believe they're worth what you're saying, that is, that's a very difficult thing to do.
[00:49:44] David Fung: We have actually done the pilot work and field work. To demonstrate by being able to oxygenate the water body, more efficiently, we create an environment for aerobic methanotrophs to thrive and for methane bubbles rising from the bottom of deep reservoirs, by again, reducing the liquid film, transfer resistance, we allow the methane to diffuse into the water faster.
[00:50:18] David Fung: So the bubble ends up being a lot smaller by the time it comes to the top of the water surface. And we've demonstrated a reduction of methane emission in these very deep water reservoirs and very large water reservoirs by 20 to 30%, by simply accelerating the oxygenation of the upper layer of the water body.
[00:50:43] Ryan Sorichetti: Very interesting. Thank you.
[00:50:48] Ryan Sorichetti: Okay. And the last one I have in the Q&A box, open for everyone is, is there a belief to be an economic target? So for example, price per acre that if met would enable wide scale adaptation in the US I'm assuming of your technology. So are you, is there a target to strive for that
[00:51:09] Ryan Sorichetti: if met would enable your technology to be broadly adopted within the US?
[00:51:16] E.J. Neafsey: Yeah. At least from our perspective. I think looking at it as a service and looking at a service that can be broken up across households is probably the best way to to think about it. So, if you're getting clean water in front of your house, probably one of your biggest investments for maybe the price of.
[00:51:32] E.J. Neafsey: One to three, streaming subscriptions. I think that becomes a really powerful price point to have, pretty much your most important service that, that you have your, your drink, your drinking water, your recreation water, and that really puts it into perspective.
[00:51:48] David Fung: What we have seen is that, as I said earlier on, for government regulations, the best thing to do is to do nothing.
[00:51:58] David Fung: And so we have not really seen any government regulators who would go out and do preventive measures because their dollars are always being demanded somewhere else. And so I think very often it is really a case of what is the least cost or alternative, and usually until drinking water is being threatened.
[00:52:24] David Fung: most government bodies would just talk about it, but nothing will happen. In the case of Israel, what we found was that in the national park they have a water body that, suffering from E.coli contamination because of all the waterfowl they keep in the park. And Israel is also the migratory bird center between Africa and Europe.
[00:52:50] David Fung: and they could not run watersports because the E.coli concentration was over five to 7,000 per hundred mil. And again, by maintaining a peak pH below 8.5, we allow the predatory bacteria to go after the e coli and the gram negative bacteria, and remove it back down to 500. Not good enough for swimming, but, but good enough for restoring watersports.
[00:53:21] David Fung: So again, it is very often reactive, because that's how the government works.
[00:53:30] Kendall Byrd: Just quickly, I think that price per acre is different depending on what entity you're talking to, right? A golf course will pay Supreme Price to make sure that all their current clientele is happy with the visuals of the water body.
[00:53:44] Kendall Byrd: To David's point, you talk to the municipality and we're talking about the health of people, and they're worried about a dollar per acre. And so this is something we're actually exploring at Caddis right now, currently, and it's been fun, but. What we've kind of jumped on or laid on is if we can provide you a better product that does a better job of treating at a higher frequency and provides higher data for the same cost you're currently paying for a lake management company, that's a good place to start on that question of price per acre.
[00:54:14] Kendall Byrd: And then from there, as we innovate, as we learn new ways to do this and new ways to implement, your costs will go down.
[00:54:23] Ryan Sorichetti: Very interesting. Thank you all for that. And I don't think there are any more questions in the Q&A box.
[00:54:35] David Fung: If I can add Ryan, I think that because our one single unit can treat such large water services, the cost per acre is not really the issue.
[00:54:46] David Fung: So I think I just want to emphasize that, looking at cost per acre, is probably not the narrative because the way that different markets react and Kendall is very correct. If it's a golf course or if it's a hotel, then the revenue driven incentive is very different than a government that's just trying to provide safe drinking water to the population.
[00:55:22] David Fung: So our cost per acre is very low. But, as I said, the competition is doing nothing.
[00:55:30] Ryan Sorichetti: Understood. Thank you David. Okay. And I think right now I'll take this time to thank our three panelists, Kendall, EJ, and David for your time today. It's been a great discussion. I think I know I've learned a lot, I've taken a lot of notes and, I think, some great questions from everyone as well.
[00:55:48] Ryan Sorichetti: And thanks to everyone who were able to attend today and for the questions that you did submit. As Max mentioned, earlier through this, there will be another part of this seminar series, in the fall. So that'll be on October 14th. same time over the noon hour from 12 to one. And the topic will be innovations in nutrient management.
[00:56:11] Ryan Sorichetti: There's a QR code on your screen there. I'm assuming that'll take you to the registration page. You can get more information. But with that, I'd like to, again, thank our panelists. Thanks very much for your time today and for the lively discussion as well to all the attendees who joined, were able to follow along and submit the questions where they could.
[00:56:29] Ryan Sorichetti: thanks all for your time today, and we look forward to seeing you in October at Innovations for Nutrient Management. Thank you and have a great week.
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