Water treatment plants in Toledo, Bowling Green, Oregon, and Celina, Ohio, will be the focus of new algal-bloom research over the next three years.
It’s a multifaceted, $1.4 million project led by three University of Toledo researchers and funded by the Army Corps of Engineers.
One of its goals is to advance early-detection techniques for algal toxins in western Lake Erie and Grand Lake St. Marys. It also aims to improve treatment once toxins get inside water plants.
The project’s lead researcher is Youngwoo Seo, a UT professor of civil and environmental engineering and chemical engineering. The other two primary researchers are Tom Bridgeman, director of UT’s Lake Erie Center, and Dae-Wook Kang, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.
“It is a really chronic problem,” Mr. Seo said. “We basically need to find a sustainable solution to handle those toxins.”
One goal is to learn more how masses of cyanobacteria — also called blue-green algae, or harmful algal blooms — release, or “lyse,” toxins within their cells into the water, Mr. Bridgeman said.
Think of those cells as toxin-filled water balloons, he said.
They’re fragile. But nobody knows at exactly what point they break apart and release their algal toxins into the water.
Such information could be useful to water-treatment plant operators, Mr. Bridgeman said.
It could get them closer to real-time information about changing water conditions each summer, and thus help them stay ahead of a problem. It would allow them to change doses of treatment chemicals in accordance with changing lake conditions, he said.
“We’re trying to give water treatment plant operators more time,” Mr. Bridgeman said. “You don’t want to break those ‘water balloons’ inside the plant.”
Treatment is a delicate balancing act.
Mr. Kang pointed out that the research will include a look into the health of free-flowing cyanobacteria, and test a theory that its cells are more likely to open up and release toxin as they are dying.
Researchers would like to know more about the life cycle of cyanobacteria, and how it affects the release of toxins, he said.
“We think the health of cyanobacteria is important,” Mr. Kang said. “If the cyanobacteria is dead, then the toxins are released.”
The research is to include use of fluorescent light to track bacteria with new instruments called fluoroprobes.
“You can detect changes in the fluorescence,” Mr. Bridgeman said.
The sensors can detect the health, or physiological condition, of the cyanobacteria — that is, whether the cells are getting weaker and more prone to start leaking their toxins into the water.
The sensors are made by the German company bbe Moldaenke, which plans to send one of its lead researchers to the area this summer to assist with research, Mr. Bridgeman said.
“We are real excited about using the new sensor technique,” Mr. Seo said.
They could be an important tool for better understanding viruses in Lake Erie, too.
One of the key findings of Toledo’s August, 2014 water crisis came weeks after an algal toxin forced nearly 500,000 residents to stay away from their tap water.
Strong, sustained winds from the northeast had blown a highly toxic bloom over and down into Toledo’s intake in Lake Erie for several days.
Little did researchers know at the time, though, that the bloom’s toxicity was likely exacerbated by an unexpected virus that had weakened cyanobacteria cells enough to break them apart, thus releasing more toxin into the open water.
A similar event, on a much smaller scale, occurred in 2019, Mr. Bridgeman said.
Other aspects of the project will include more advanced looks at how natural, biological controls can work with chemical algaecides and other treatments within plants “to attack cyanobacteria and degrade toxins produced by cyanobacteria,” according to a UT statement.
Mr. Kang’s research also aims to better understand what triggers the toxin gene production of cyanobacteria.
Mr. Seo also said UT “is collaborating with microbiologists at the Ohio State University who have isolated different viruses of the cyanobacteria, and we are evaluating their effectiveness to control the harmful algal bloom.”
His lab is working on efforts to biologically degrade cyanobacteria and their toxins with naturally occurring bacteria and viruses from the lake, in tandem with chemical treatments approved by the National Science Foundation.
In addition to OSU, project collaborators include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Sepro Inc.
“Harmful algal blooms are a growing and costly problem affecting the nation,” said Jen Seiter-Moser, the Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s acting technical director for civil works, environmental engineering and sciences.
Solutions from this research “can be applied regionally and then scaled up for nationwide application,” she added.
First Published May 19, 2021, 11:59 p.m.
