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The Buffalo Pound Water Treatment Plant is turning to Superbuoy to help protect the drinking water the plant produces.
The plant, which is co-owned by the cities of Regina and Moose Jaw, has purchased a $250,000 high-tech buoy — nicknamed Superbuoy — to monitor conditions at Buffalo Pound. The plant produces drinking water for 260,000 people in the Regina and Moose Jaw areas.
According to a media release, the custom-designed buoy is equipped with research-grade weather and atmospheric monitors as well as “winter-hardy water quality sensors” so it can be used year-round.
“From a research perspective, the Superbuoy provides continuity as well as some neat new tools,” said Dr. Helen Baulch, an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan’s School of Environment and Sustainability, and Centennial
Enhancement Chair in Aquatic Ecosystem Biogeochemistry.
“For example, it has cutting-edge sensors to more accurately measure carbon dioxide that’s important to lake ecology, and some new cameras with telemetry so that we are able to monitor the lake surface for scum, from our desks in Saskatoon and get down there to sample it.”
The Superbuoy, which is expected to arrive in time for summer, will replace Baulch’s current monitoring equipment. That equipment is eight years old and is nearing the end of its useful life.
In the release, Baulch and Blair Kardash — the manager of laboratory and research at the treatment plant — said an emergency water restriction in Moose Jaw and Regina in 2015 is proof that closely monitoring lake water is vital.
“The problem was caused by thermal stratification in the lake affecting water clarifiers in the plant, cutting treatment capacity in half,” the media release said.
“Baulch and Kardash have since developed ‘decision trees’ on how to use the sensor data to adapt plant operations during periods of stratification extremes, and to advise the cities to have enough water in their reservoirs to ride out any potential treatment slowdowns.”