Atoyac River Online Water Quality Monitoring

Preservation, conservation and improvement of water quality.

Challenge

The Atoyac river basin in Mexico is one of the most polluted basins in the country. It serves two of Puebla state’s largest urban centres and a significant number of textile and food industries. It receives substantial urban wastewater discharges, including direct releases into the Atoyac river.

The Atoyac basin and its ecosystems are now protected by the Puebla regional government’s Ministry of Environmental Planning and Sustainability. This public body has established several plans and programs to preserve, protect, conserve, and restore its various ecosystems. Its guiding principle is reducing the risk to public health.

Excess polluting discharges frequently overwhelm and nullify the river's self-purification capacity. The Ministry acknowledged the need for a real-time monitoring system to manage and record unauthorised discharges effectively. This data, coupled with historical records, facilitates effective government planning and implementation of measures to control discharges, mitigating their effects on water quality.

ADASA’s Solution

ADASA designed and supplied the Ministry with an automatic water quality monitoring network, with 12 fixed stations and two mobile stations distributed throughout the basin. These provide real-time information on the physical-chemical characteristics of the river, helping to identify and control discharges.

All stations feature automatic samplers and physicochemical and nutrient and organic parameter analysers. The measurements taken by analysers transmit in real-time to a centralised database, which also collects data from manual sampling networks managed by the customer.

A Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) for remote data acquisition and station status monitoring complements the system, alongside analysis tools that offer graphic visualisation of the measured data. All data undergoes a validation process to guarantee reliable water quality and environmental information.

Result

Thanks to the adaptation of ADASA’s water quality monitoring network in the Atoyac basin, the Ministry of Environmental Planning and Sustainability obtained information about when and approximately where unauthorised discharges occurred. The stations reported the approximate start time of spillages, intensity, profile, source, and behaviour. They also alerted responsible authorities, effecting rapid reactions to possible pollution episodes. This improved information flow helped reduce intentional and unauthorised spillages, too.

Network data generated historical measurements of the records that define water quality parameters. This information influenced and propagated the development of government strategies aimed at the sanitation of the basin itself and the monitoring and fulfilment of the Atoyac River Classification Declaration's environmental objectives. The Declaration sets out water quality targets and conditions which are taken into account at various stages when granting water discharge permits in the area.

Within a year, the automatic stations' network reduced pollutant discharges in the Atoyac river basin to 60% of previous levels. ADASA’s unique tool reduces the environmental impact of spills, protects the river's ecosystem, and ensures riverside populations' health.

Client

The regional government of Puebla, Mexico, has a Ministry of Environmental Planning and Sustainability. This public body’s objective is to reduce environmental risks. It achieves this through the strategic implementation of policies, projects and programs, supported by technological and scientific innovation, all within a framework of legality and social inclusion.