Innovation at the Forefront of Water Quality
A city that was once alienated from its waterfront has been able to change its community’s relationship with the shorelines of Lake Ontario. Kingston is now considered the gold standard for what can only be defined as a swimmable city. With such a vibrant recreational water community, Kingston has proven to be the right place for Swim Drink Fish to launch our innovation hub.
“Because we do not have to advocate for baseline change, we can spend time paving the way for what recreational water quality should look like” - Isabel Fleisher, Manager, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper.
With new technology and opportunities to collaborate with local groups, the Kingston hub is where Swim Drink Fish has been pushing innovation forward. A large part of this innovation has been made possible by TECTA and the B16 instrument. The TECTA B16 instrument is an automated microbiological platform that uses patented Polymer Partition technology. The B16 has built-in automated sample interpretation, which means that results can be transmitted directly to any digital device. While Swim Drink Fish uses this technology for recreational water quality, it also has the capacity to be used for drinking water quality. This technology uses fluorescence to determine how much bacteria is in a water sample at a much faster rate than the traditional method. Community scientists will be notified within 18 hours if the water quality is good. The notification will be significantly faster if the water does not meet recreational water standards. The entire process takes between 2 to 18 hours, depending on how high the bacteria contamination level is.
The current standard method for testing takes 24 hours to process. This lengthy incubation period is less ideal because, as we like to say, water quality changes like the weather. Same-day results equate to more relevant information, which in turn allows recreational water users to make more informed decisions about when and where they can enter the water. However, it is notable that the current Guidelines for Canadian Recreational Water Quality were last updated in April of 2012. They are in the process of being updated to consider more up-to-date and relevant information.
Through our partnership with TECTA, we will also be able to collaborate on information regarding Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs). Using the B16 instrument, we will be able to start understanding how CSOs affect water quality in nearby areas and the times at which said sites would be most affected by sewage overflows.
TECTA B16 Instrument at the Kingston Monitoring Hub
Having data sent directly to digital devices has been one of the most beneficial aspects of the TECTA equipment. It has given staff the opportunity to spend less time in the lab and more time being present in the community while still being able to deliver water quality results in a more timely manner. This has allowed Swim Drink Fish to further expand our capacity for educational opportunities about water literacy and stewardship in Kingson. This has been invaluable because, as an organization, we continuously look for new ways to innovate, not just through science. We are seeking out ways to improve our processes to be more inclusive of how and who we sample with.
Innovation has not been limited to Kingston, with our Edmonton hub also taking enormous strides forward, thanks to Patrick C. Hanington at the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. Our team has had the opportunity to use quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) testing for the 2022 sampling season. qPCR is a method used to precisely test samples using DNA markers resulting in some of the fastest water quality results currently available. After samples arrive at the lab, this method can achieve results in under 4 hours. Using qPCR testing, we also have the capacity to trace the origins of enterococci in the sample and determine what may be affecting our water quality (i.e. people, wildlife, etc.). While qPCR testing is not as common due to associated costs it certainly highlights the future of what recreational water quality monitoring will look like.
These hubs are exemplary models for the future of Swim Drink Fish and recreational water quality monitoring. Innovation for us is about looking forward rather than looking back, and we hope to continue this momentum into our future seasons. We hope this inspires other Canadian cities to take action and follow suit in becoming truly swimmable cities.
Source: https://www.tecta-pds.com/items/tecta%E2%84%A2-b16-instrument
