Puritas for Water Quality

Water covers 70% of our planet, and it is easy to think that it will always be plentiful. However, freshwater—the stuff we drink, bathe in, irrigate our farm fields with—is incredibly rare. Only 3% of the world’s water is fresh water, and two-thirds of that is tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use.

As a result, some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. Consequently, we cannot afford to allow our fresh water reserves to become poisoned by toxic algae, as it did in Western Lake Erie in 2014, shutting off the water supply to half a million people in the Toledo, Ohio, USA area. And the intensity of harmful algal blooms in many lakes around the world has increased according to satellite imagery collected over nearly three decades.

The problem is rapidly growing on a global scale. Immediately below (on the left), Puritas detects and measures toxic algae in Lake Qaraoun, an artificial lake or reservoir located in the southern region of the Beqaa Valley, Lebanon, on August 23, 2020. On the right Puritas reveals the cause of the toxic algae, total phosphorus, most likely fertilizer coming from farms primarily located in the northern region surrounding the Litani River.

Puritas Remote Sensing has the unique ability to:

  • Detect and measure, in parts per billion, toxic algae, and more importantly, and uniquely,
  • Detect and measure Total Phosphorus, the number one nutrient, usually from agricultural sources, that feeds the toxic algal blooms. Our technology – unique in the world – enables you to locate and isolate the sources of the phosphorus, so that those sources can be remediated and the toxic algae threat eliminated.

Puritas’ abilities in the water quality arena go well beyond toxic algae and nutrients:

  • Measurement of turbidity and suspended sediments
  • Chlorophyll-a
  • Water temperature, particularly as it applies to the temperature of discharge from electric generating plants which can deplete waterways of dissolved oxygen.

And the research and development of other capabilities continues…