Public service authorities across Virginia and beyond take actions all the time to keep drinking water safe for residents. And the Western Virginia Water Authority now has a new tool in its arsenal when it comes to that fight.
Carvins Cove is one of the reservoirs that contributes to the drinking water supply for the Roanoke region – with more than 300,000 residents relying on the Western Virginia Water Authority’s services.
That agency currently has lots of monitoring equipment to keep track of things like chlorophyll levels that can lead to harmful algae blooms and so-called forever chemicals known as PFAS. But, Jamie Morris, the capital improvement project manager for the authority, tells me that equipment has largely been focused on where water enters its treatment facilities. To get a picture beyond that currently requires a good bit of work…
“Up until then, the only other way to do that was really to go out and do manual sampling," Morris says. "And so, you’re out on a boat, you’re grabbing grab samples that are just snapshots.”
Enter NASA and Virginia Tech…
“We would like to be able to become a little bit more proactive," says Cayelan Carey, co-director of the Center for Ecosystem Forecasting at Tech. "And so we can use satellite data to take images of upstream in the reservoir – so maybe we can detect sediment plumes that are coming in from streams before it makes it down the full length of the reservoir over the next few weeks.”
Carey and her team are working to utilize all of that data— from the current monitoring systems to historical data and the new satellite imagery.
“And so, the goal of this new NASA project is to make water forecasts that can then be given to the managers that can say, ‘In three weeks’ time, we’re likely to see an algal bloom, or in four weeks’ time, we need to be prepared for lower oxygen levels.”
Carey and her team hope the model can eventually be used for other lakes, dams and reservoirs in Appalachia and beyond.
