Clean Water Works
CLEVELAND, OHIO: From the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, an in-depth and fun conversation led by Donna Friedman and Mike Uva on any and all topics related to clean water, wastewater treatment, stormwater management, and the people, projects, and programs serving Lake Erie and our local waterways and communities.
Clean Water Works
A Smart Lake and Economy with Cleveland Water Alliance
A lake that learns can change a region. Sam Martin, Director of Communications and Engagement at Cleveland Water Alliance (CWA), shares how Lake Erie has become the world’s largest digitally-connected freshwater test bed—and why that matters for public health, utility costs, and the next wave of water-tech jobs.
Sam walks us through the water economy—everything from maritime logistics and treatment plants to sensing, analytics, and policy—and explains why real-world testing beats lab demos every time. The CWA acts as matchmaker between innovators and end users, backing pilot projects with insurance and support. It makes a compelling case for Cleveland as a freshwater innovation capital.
Okay, today uh we have Sam Martin. She works at Cleveland Water Alliance. She's the director of communications and engagement. Thanks for joining us, Sam. Thanks for having me. Do you mind talking a little bit about the mission of CWA?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so we really exist to advance the economy and innovation surrounding water in our region. I don't know if either of you were at the State of the Great Lakes address with Chris Winslow, and he said, there's no good economy without a good environment. There's no healthy economy without a healthy environment. And we fully believe that at CWA. The water economy is everything that touches water. So from the maritime industry to the sensing and monitoring technology industry, that's really where we thrive, to research and academia and policy is related to the water economy, our agencies, our utilities. That's a huge industry that people don't even think about when they get the water out of their tap. There's a whole economy surrounding protecting that water and getting it to you. And so we really leaned heavily into the innovation aspect of that. There's so many potential solutions out there to address issues like emerging contaminants and harmful algal blooms and microplastics, or just monitoring our water at a cheaper price, because that's it's not a cheap thing to do. It requires a lot of time and a lot of labor and a lot of technology. So there was a huge need to test and trial that technology because most of the ideas kind of died if they didn't have enough money or if they didn't have an opportunity to test and trial in a real world environment because it might work in a lab, but that doesn't mean it's going to actually work in an environment. So we created a test bed, a giant test bed out on our lake and out in our rivers and creeks and streams that now covers over 7,700 square miles. So that is made up through a telecommunications network similar to Wi-Fi. It's called Lorowan, L-O-R-A-W-A-N. So that is um long range and a low power network. So it covers a wide range without it taking a lot of power to do so. It's like a plug-and-play system with sensors throughout the lake.
SPEAKER_00:And it's a test bed, you call it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The test bed is anything that you can really plug into to test your technology. So it's this giant coverage. If you have a monitoring technology, that's say that monitors hypoxia, that's something that we deal with. Um, hypoxia is something that happens naturally, but we have it quite heavily sometimes in Lake Erie.
SPEAKER_00:What is it?
SPEAKER_01:Hypoxia, low oxygen. So sometimes when there's fish that die off and people are like, there's a bunch of dead fish, what's going on in the lake?
SPEAKER_00:We had one recently, it was really yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So that's hypoxia. Yeah. So that's something that has to be monitored, both to like answer the public and say, here's exactly what's going on, and say, Don't freak out. It's totally natural and normal. And so um, it's just low oxygen levels that are kind of just think of a bubble of low oxygen and fish swim into it, and then they don't have oxygen. And but that's something that needs to be monitored. And so there's a whole industry around monitoring that. So from a sensor that can tell you in real time what those conditions are to the interface on an app or um a computer, to an AI algorithm that can tell you what might happen next, or if this then that we need to monitor for, to the hardware that, you know, the adjustments, the chemicals, this the physical solutions to dealing with that. All of that is an industry. In Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, um, you know, we talk about our past of our burning river, but because of that past, we have one of the highest concentrations of water expertise in the world. So we want to find and accelerate solutions to these global water issues and do it here and make an economic impact here because why not here? We have world-class utilities, we have world-class research institutions, we have leading industrial water users, we have incredible technology companies and accelerator programs here. Labs, why not here? Once you have an idea, once you prove that it works, you need to scale it, you need to manufacture it, you might need to prototype it a little bit differently. You might need to take it back to a lab and tweak it. All of that has an impact here. You're gonna need to hire marketing help, you're gonna need to hire legal help, you're gonna need to ship maybe with the port of Cleveland. So all of that has a ripple effect on the economy of innovating here.
SPEAKER_00:We should mention that the sewer district is a founding member.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. No, the sewer district has been around for us since day one because they saw the possibilities and the need and the importance of accelerating and implementing these solutions and having that innovative forward thinking isn't always encouraged at the utility level and isn't always possible at the utility level. And I think it speaks a lot to how holistic the sewer district has been thinking for many years about the needs and possibilities in our region. A lot of times we attract companies from overseas looking to enter the US market. Those innovations might be existing and implemented in Europe somewhere or in Asia.
SPEAKER_00:And because there's more support for them because they're privately owned, or they have more uh they don't have to have to jump through as many hoops to implement them.
SPEAKER_01:So um yes, yeah, all of that is true. So I mean, our utilities here have limited time and money and resources because they're publicly funded. And I'm not advocating that everything should be privately funded, but there's uh a governing body that exists in in Europe that incentivizes the utilities to innovate. So here in the US, a lot of our mandates are unfunded. So the mandates that come down from um legislators are unfunded, and they say, you guys gotta figure it out. A lot a lot of times in the UK, those mandates are funded. There's there's there's incentive to innovate and oftentimes requirements to innovate. There's utilities that have teams of 60 to 100 people that are on their innovation team alone. So totally different ballgame over there. So they might be looking to enter the US market and essentially drop their solutions into this market. So we as CWA, we're we play the middleman. So we go to our utility partners, like the sewer district, and say, what keeps you guys up at night? What is hindering your ability to do more better? What are you worrying about right now? And then we go to our kind of portfolio of innovators and say, can we match make you with a potential solution? And is there something that we can try out together that benefits the both of you? It benefits the innovator because they get to see how their technology performs in a real world environment. And it benefits the end user, like the utility, because they get access to this new solution, oftentimes for free or for very low cost. And at CWA, we mitigate the risk by offering kind of an insurance to cover both parties to incentivize this innovation. So we're really positioning our region to be attractive for these international innovators to come here and do business, but also innovators from other regions, they might be implementing their solution in a coastal region and they want to see how it performs in a non-saltwater environment as well. So we want to bridge that gap between those end users and those making the technology because in the water space, they've been very traditionally siloed. So there's people out here innovating, and the sewer district can't pick up the phone every time, you know, Joe Schmoe says, I have an idea. Do you want to try that? There's offices overseas that literally take those calls and trial those solutions. But we bridge that gap here because we understand the economic impact it can have in our region. In the UK, I went to an innovation festival and then we met with some of the the water utilities there, the drinking water utilities, and they have the same concerns we do. Our concerns are not unique. They are concerned about harmful algal blooms and about farm runoff and monitoring that quicker and more easily. And they're concerned about perception. So being a historically industrial area, there are still a lot of perceptions around the water that they're looking to break, not dissimilar to us. What kind of perceptions of, you know, uh industrial waste at one time being in the water. Um, you know, and because we think it's not that far removed. A generation back are the people who witnessed some of the pollution actually happening or people getting sick from the pollution. And so it takes a long time for those perceptions to fade away. And in the sewer district and Cleveland Water and the Metro Parks, and so many partners in our region have been doing an incredible job about of getting people out into the water and sharing the messaging that not only is our water safe, we're pretty dang lucky to have the water that we have. I talked about our Smart Lake Erie watershed initiative. That is both the test bed and what feeds data to some of our regional utilities in the area and our water managers. So that Smart Lake Erie watershed, it's both that plug and play test bed, and we have our smart buoys and sensors throughout the lake that feed those data to our water managers. And that pulls a million data points annually. And the more that we know about our water, the more data points that we have, the more we can see trends or the way that things move throughout the lake. And that is actually the largest digitally connected freshwater body in the world. That's 7,700 square miles of coverage. And so that is really how we're accelerating technology and empowering decision makers to have more informed decisions. And the Lake Erie Volunteer Science Network really feeds into our implementation of that technology. We really have assembled so many partners throughout the Lake Erie Basin. So partners like Metro Parks throughout the region or volunteer water monitoring programs and empowering them with technology and tools and a process to collect that data and to make it good and credible for researchers and academia or legislators to use. So before our work, there was no standardized process for that collection. And we've created that process and have implemented. So if a new partner wants to come on, they have to learn the proper process to collect that data. But it's also an opportunity. If one of our innovators has a handheld device or a new monitoring device, we can trial that through those partners as well to see how it performs against that benchmark data from the existing device that they use. So they might create a smaller device or a cheaper device or device that is able to read the water more quickly or in a different way or different parameters. That whole network of volunteers is really an asset of our test bed to test technology in a real world way as well.
SPEAKER_00:And when you say volunteer, do you mean anyone or someone with a science background?
SPEAKER_01:No, it can be anyone. Um, people in the community collecting data for their community. Partners like the Cleveland Metro Parks will organize the volunteers, students, retired people. It's a great way to get people out on the water and interacting with their um communities. And if people want to find out about this volunteer opportunity, they can go to our website and click on Volunteer Science Network and they can learn more about the hubs in their region doing the work.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe talk a little bit more about telecom and the Smart Lake Tech because it's so similar to what we do with our monitoring.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we've had um one really cool outcome of our Smart Lake Erie watershed work because if they can determine, you know, the wind speed and wave height in different areas that can make help them make informed decisions. But we've had a utility utilize it for flood information. You know, we have water level sensors throughout the lake as well. And because of some overflow information, they were able to take that information and raise their water intake and make physical infrastructure changes because of what the data they were getting on through the Smart Lake Erie watershed. So our Smart Lake Erie watershed um is the largest digitally connected freshwater body in the world. And it is comprised of both a telecommunications network called Lorwan, um, low power, wide range area network. So it's kind of like Wi-Fi. And there are hundreds of sensors throughout the lake on smart buoys, stationary, on bridges, um, maybe in marinas, pulling data about our lake that we feed to water managers. It pulls a million data points annually, but it also serves as a test bed to test and trial technologies and a plug-and-play system. And we've seen some really incredible solutions throughout the past couple of years. It's only existed for about five years now, and it started out because we had a couple smart buoys and they each needed a cell phone line to relay data.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_01:And we realized that wasn't sustainable. Cleveland was a little bit slow going as a smart city, and we figured, why not do this in our lake? So when we got started 10 years ago, some very smart people, including um Jenny Grisilli Brown, who we just lost recently, she was in her 90s. She was one of our founding board members, and along with the sewer district and academic partners and other agency and utility partners, wanted to invest in this infrastructure. And because of US EDA, economic development agency funding and funding from the state of Ohio, we've invested over$12 million in the infrastructure to build out this system.
SPEAKER_00:When you say a smart city or smart lake, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01:So some smart cities will use sensors throughout their city for things like traffic flow and parking and information about crime. We utilize our data on the lake on how to best manage our water to learn about trends, what's going on in the water? How can we better recreate in the water? How can our community better utilize this incredible resource right here, more safely, more effectively, more efficiently? How can we better take care of this most precious resource that we have? And how can we utilize it for an economic opportunity to solve the issues associated with that? Because they're not unique to us. The issues that we experience are global water issues. Harmful algal blooms and emerging contaminants are issues worldwide. And if we work to solve them here and advance solutions here, that benefits our region. Something that is, I think, a really important shared interest of ours is E. coli detection and health in the lake. That is a really hot space for innovation right now. There's not any real-time E. coli detection right now. There is no way to put something in the water and to know what's going on as it relates to E. coli in that exact moment. We have to take a sample, take it back to the lab, analyze it. And there are some really promising solutions, especially coming out of Europe. One of the biggest drivers of innovation is legislation. And Europe has always had very strict legislation surrounding their water safety and their water health. All of their utilities are also privatized. So they have different wiggle room and oftentimes more funding to advance solutions in-house. And so there are some really exciting potential solutions that can offer real-time information about E. coli. And in the US, there are lower cost options that give us potential proxy indicators for that E. coli as well. And we're actually deploying one in partnership with the sewer district right now to see how it performs.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's great.
SPEAKER_00:I know when you're probably talking to people, some of these partner agencies in Europe, you're talking about Lake Erie.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so what's your pitch about the grandeur of Lake Erie and how you ask, even for people who live here who take the lake for granted?
SPEAKER_01:This is like one of my favorite talking points and one of my favorite like party topics is how great Lake Erie is. So Lake Erie is nearly the size of Belgium. It is massive, and it's really hard until you see it on a map compared to European countries, how big it is. And one of the selling points of innovators to come here and test and trial their technology and enter the US market through us is because there's so such a wide range of conditions on Lake Erie. We have really incredible wetlands on Lake Erie. You know, the waves get really gnarly sometimes. There's so many incredible creeks and streams and tributaries. And the Lake Erie watershed is the most populous of all the watersheds in the Great Lakes. So Lake Erie is not the biggest of the Great Lakes. In fact, it's only got 2% of the water within the Great Lakes, but it's got over 50% of the fish of the biodiversity. It is the most biodiverse of the Great Lakes. And it's the shallowest. And so people will always hate on Lake Erie and say, it's so murky, it's so brown, you know, you go to Lake Michigan and it's so much clearer. Well, the murkiness is actually a protective measure of the lake. She's protecting herself because if the water was too clear, because it's so shallow, there'd be harmful algal blooms like crazy because they'd be photosynthesizing with the sunlight. So she needs to be murky. Let her like be in her murky era and protect herself. Like she's just doing self-care.
SPEAKER_00:Don't get down about the brown. That's a freebie for you.
SPEAKER_02:There you go. Is that our new catchphrase? From our marketing team to yours. Thank you. And on our fish, like people come here from all over the world to fish here.
SPEAKER_00:And you mentioned Lake Erie being the smallest, you said 2% of the Great Lakes volume of water, but it also has a very high percentage of the overall economic.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, if the Great Lakes were their own country, they would be like the fifth largest GDP in the world. So that's the Great Lakes as a whole. But the Lake Erie watershed, it's the most populous and definitely has one of the biggest economic impacts of the entire region. You know, we we think when we think of the power of the Great Lakes, oftentimes we just think of the water. And that's that's huge, having that actual water resource right there. But it blends out into our interaction with the water, into the economic opportunities surrounding recreation. It's not a coincidence that we have some of the best utilities in the world right here. We're stewarding this really, really, really important resource. And why not utilize all of the people in our region, all of the economies in our region to further that water management right here? Why not make Northeast Ohio the innovation capital of the world when it comes to freshwater?
SPEAKER_00:Let's talk about some of these cool projects.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we really, like I said, specialize in IoT, so Internet of Things technologies. That's what our Smart Lake Erie watershed really exists to advance and further. We have a really exciting technology out of South Korea, and they are a sensor on a tiny little chip and have been in talks with partners. And if everything moves forward, they could be a really big game changer in so many industries. So we think about when you get your oil changed, it's really just going off of vibes, right? You're like, okay, I'm at a certain mileage or it's been so much time, I should get my oil changed now. Or your filter alerts and your water filters might just light up because it's been a certain amount of days, but you don't know actually how gunked up they actually are, or if there's any contaminants in there prompting you to change that. That kind of technology could be implemented throughout so many different solutions to give you real-time information in a tiny, tiny little way on so many different industries. So that's a really exciting one. We have a pilot right now. I feel like this is up your guys' alley. It's a uh poop-specific pilot, but not human.
unknown:Cow.
SPEAKER_00:Cow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Farm runoff has been um thought to be a major contributor to harmful algal blooms. And a lot of farmers spread manure on their crops. That's just what you do. And also dairy farms. Often the manure is put into a pond and it runs off into the water in a large rainstorm. These are really, really complicated solutions that are needed to address these problems. It's not a quick fix. But there is a company out of Willoughby. They work in air pollution control. So for like industrial air pollution control solutions, we put out a request for technology a few years back saying, hey, we're looking to address farm manure runoff, the nutrients from that runoff that cause harmful algal blooms. Anyone got any ideas? So this is what we call open innovation. This is a really incredible way of us connecting these agencies and these people who have the problems to those who might have solutions. So we put out the call to our networks as well. So right now they are on their third farm deploying their solution. And it really, we call it the poop electrification project internally because it electrifies the manure and separates out the nutrients that cause and contribute to harmful alkal blooms. So those hyperconcentrated nutrients can be really, really beneficial for some things. And so they can reuse that in their soil and make more of a direct nutrient impact into their soil, and we capture it from running off into the waterways. So it's being tested right now. Um, and we're working with Heidelberg University to see if the solution is working. So they're gonna help us assess the data. So it's being trialed right now on three different farms in Western Ohio. Cool. And another really exciting project that is happening uh in partnership with Avon Lake Regional Water. They're the first location in North America to be trialing this technology. So it is uh a solution that generates hypochloride on site. So chlorine essentially is needed. It's mandated by the EPA to disinfect and clean our water before we drink it. And that chlorine is oftentimes shipped on the backs of trains. Um, it's very volatile to handle, and it's very, very, very expensive. It's gone up quite a bit just in recent years. And those expenses are really passed off to the ratepayers to cover those costs. So it's also poses a threat of being shipped on trains. You know, train derailments happen and have happened in Ohio recently, unfortunately, um, and can have a major environmental impact. And just from a safety perspective, working in uh the plant of dealing with that chemical as well. So this technology, another electrification technology, electrifies salt. And where do we have a lot of salt? Right under Lake Erie. So mining salt, taking it on site, and they get they can generate this on site versus having to pay shipping costs as well. Electrify the salt, generate the chlorine, and use it right on site. And if they have excess, they can sell it to other regional utilities to save costs and generate income as well. That's being installed as we speak and we'll be live soon as well. And like I said, it's the first in North America.
SPEAKER_02:Um, a little bit about your background. You have your degree in poli sci.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, I started out as a poli sci major. Okay. And I'm like, well, I don't want to be a lawyer. I don't really know what I want to do. Um, so then I switched to broadcasting. So I'm like, well, I like talking about this stuff. So through that, I took communications classes and I was like, well, this is basically majoring and talking to people. Um, and here we are, I'm on a podcast now, so it's all going great. Using your degree. Yeah, really using that degree. Yeah. So I don't have a water background at all. Cleveland Water Alliance is my first position in the water space. Okay. I've just been always been an enthusiast. Like I've gotten Ranger Rick magazine since I was little. I was a Zoo Books kid. I loved all of the like life science classes growing up, but I never thought how I could integrate that into my skill set as a communicator. And CWA is kind of the perfect mishmash of that. We just celebrated our 10-year anniversary as an organization for a nonprofit that's pretty new. We've grown exponentially in the past 10 years, really, even in the past um five years since I've started.
SPEAKER_02:Are you excited about all these waterfront development plans? Um Clean Water Institute, Freshwater, sorry, Freshwater Institute.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the Freshwater Institute, Emily Baca, has been doing a really great job with County Executive Ronain standing up our Freshwater Institute and really connecting community members. They just graduated their first class of students through the institute, I know. And, you know, some of those students had never been on the water before are partners at Argonaut. Um, so the Argonaut students actually help deploy our smart buoys every year. And there's a huge workforce development opportunity there. And I know that's something that utilities deal with as well is a workforce that's retiring and inspiring the younger generation to fill these roles, to get excited about water, to understand how lucrative these opportunities are and how incredible these career paths can be. That's all a part of the water economy. We need all of it, it's like the water cycle, you know, we need one to support one another to really fully thrive. And we, um, CWA is really working on the physical logistics of attracting these technologies here, accelerating them, connecting them with end users like the sewer district and other utilities, and helping them launch into our market.
SPEAKER_02:Cleveland Water Alliance. Yeah. Thanks, Sam, for coming on today.
SPEAKER_00:Sam Martin, Director of Communications and Engagement at the Cleveland Water Alliance.
SPEAKER_01:Website is Clevelandwater Alliance.org.
SPEAKER_00:Easy enough. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Thanks, Sam.
