你可能还记得,过去的这个夏天,一百万人生活在托莱多,俄亥俄州,区域被告知不要喝他们的水龙头的水出来了好几天。宣布进入紧急状态,因为有害藻华,毒素释放到水可以使许多人生病。
海藻像附近托莱多在一定程度上是由于过量的营养物质在水里——具体来说,氮和磷。这些营养物质对生态系统是必不可少的,但是太多的人在一个地方是坏消息。有害藻华不仅给人们的健康带来巨大的风险,他们也会引起鱼类和其他水生野生动物死亡。
清理后发生的赤潮喝水可以成本高达数十亿美元,和当地经济会受影响。美国旅游业就失去了每年近10亿美元当人们选择不鱼,去划船或者访问受到影响的区域。这是我们国家的一个最大的和最昂贵的环境问题。也是一个特别艰难,因为营养物质可以从远上游径流,并收集在安静的水域,如湖泊或海岸线。
这就是为什么一群联邦机构和私人合作伙伴——包括我们的办公室的研发和我们办公室的水——宣布营养传感器的挑战。挑战将有助于加速传感器的发展,可以部署在环境来衡量我国营养的水道。它的目标是有新的廉价传感器启动并运行到2017年。
在EPA我们运行一个营养管理创新研究项目,在网站,从墨西哥湾的切萨皮克湾的大湖。我们也正在与新技术,可以让我们更好的营养信息污染,包括卫星和便携式远程传感器。
有一些巨大的挑战我们需要考虑采取下一步营养污染。我们需要扩大监测工作,得到更多的信息关于营养来自哪里,他们建立。但是我们目前的技术太贵这样的规模。我们还需要确保任何新的监控工作准确、可靠,所以我们获取数据我们可以信任。
营养传感器的挑战将这些需求的技术开发人员。它将支持努力创建的负担得起的,我们需要准确和可靠的传感器。它还将提供参与实验室和现场验证的组织和帮助他们展示他们的创新。
这些类型的伙伴关系保持我国的科学前沿,并帮助我们承担大、复杂的问题,即使在现在,当预算保持相同的情况下,甚至萎缩。当我们得到最好的思想在每个部门一起工作,我们可以更好的保护环境和人类健康。
New Challenge: Put Technology To Work To Protect Drinking Water
You likely remember when, this past summer, half a million people who live in the Toledo, Ohio, area were told not to drink the water coming out of their taps for several days. A state of emergency was declared because of a harmful algal bloom, which released toxins into the water that could have made many people ill.
Algal blooms like the one near Toledo are partly caused by an excessive amount of nutrients in the water – specifically, nitrogen and phosphorus. These nutrients are essential for ecosystems, but too many of them in one place is bad news. Not only do harmful algal blooms pose huge risks for people’s health, they can also cause fish and other aquatic wildlife to die off.
Cleaning up drinking water after a harmful algal bloom can cost billions of dollars, and local economies can suffer. The U.S. tourism industry alone loses close to $1 billion each year when people choose not to fish, go boating or visit areas that have been affected. It’s one of our country’s biggest and most expensive environmental problems. It’s also a particularly tough one, since nutrients can travel from far upstream and in runoff, and collect in quieter waters like lakes or along coastlines.
That’s why a group of federal agencies and private partners – including our Office of Research and Development and our Office of Water – are announcing the Nutrient Sensor Challenge. The challenge will help accelerate the development of sensors that can be deployed in the environment to measure nutrients in our country’s waterways. Its goal is to have new, affordable sensors up and running by 2017.
At EPA we run an innovative research program on nutrients management, at sites that range from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes to Chesapeake Bay. We’ve also been working with new technologies that can give us better information on nutrient pollution, including satellites and portable remote sensors.
There are a few big challenges we’ll need to reckon with to take the next step on nutrient pollution. We need to expand monitoring efforts and get even more information about where nutrients are coming from and where they’re building up. But our current technologies are too expensive to take to that kind of scale. We also need to ensure that any new monitoring effort is accurate and reliable, so we’re getting data we can trust.
The Nutrient Sensor Challenge puts these needs out to the world of technology developers. It will support efforts to create the kind of affordable, accurate and reliable sensors we need. It will also provide the organizations that participate with laboratory and field verification and help them showcase their innovation.
These kinds of partnerships keep our country’s science on the cutting edge, and help us take on big, complex problems, even at times like now when budgets are staying the same, or even shrinking. When we get the best minds in every sector working together, we can better protect the environment and human health.