Water quality sensor deployment at Milltown Lake – December 2011

The Marine and Environmental Sensing Technology Hub (MESTECH) in DCU and the Centre for Freshwater Studies (CFS) in DkIT have joined together to deploy an inshore buoy. This system is collecting continuous, real-time environmental and water quality data from Milltown Lake, Co. Monaghan. Milltown Lake serves as the drinking water source for the Churchill and Oram Group Water Scheme (GWS). In Ireland, 15 % of drinking water comes from GWS and private supplies (including wells serving single houses). They are found primarily in rural areas, which are generally not served by a public water supply, and are privately owned, operated, and maintained by their members.

The catchment and the lake at Milltown was previously the study site for the National Source Protection Pilot Project and is currently being monitored by the CFS for point and diffuse sources of contamination, in order to identify the various land uses and activities, which may be sources of contamination that could potentially impact lake water quality.

This background data along with the experience of MESTECH members have been involved in projects such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funded DEPLOY project, (www.DEPLOY.ie) which demonstrated how state of the art technology could be implemented for cost effective, continuous, real-time monitoring of a river catchment. This experience will be invaluable in collecting and monitoring the lake through the planned year-long deployment and disseminating the collected results to the widest possible audience. Further information and live data from the lake will be available on-line at http://www.milltownlakewatch.com in the New Year.

The research team in MESTECH and the CFS are members of GLEON (http://www.gleon.org/), a global research effort to address local issues for individual lake ecosystems, documenting changes in lake ecosystems that occur in response to different landuse, latitude and climate. Instrumented platforms on lakes around the world have been deployed, which are capable of sensing key limnological variables and displaying the data in near-real time on the Internet.

Deployment of the buoy at Milltown Lake, November 2011. L – R: Antóin Lawlor (DCU); Patrick McCabe, Patrick Rafferty, Eleanor Jennings and Vicky Veerkamp (DkIT); Deirdre Davis, Michael Boyd, Anthony Loughran (Churchill & Oram GWS); and George Poynts Angling Association.