The UK’s leading water treatment specialist Siltbuster is launching an online, real-time water quality monitoring and reporting system – Clarity by Siltbuster.
Designed in conjunction with Siltbuster’s water treatment systems, Clarity offers Environmental Advisors and Managers in the construction industry greater peace of mind when monitoring environmental performance remotely.
Richard. D. Coulton, General Manager – Construction at Siltbuster, comments: “It’s common place for Environmental Advisors to be responsible for several project sites at any one time, all demanding the same level of attention. With fines becoming more prevalent for breaching environmental permits, advisors are often left with no choice but to delegate the supervision and maintenance of operational environmental protection systems to the project site managers.
“Irrespective of how diligent, thorough and environmentally aware the site manager is, they too are accountable for numerous daily tasks resulting in continual supervision and monitoring of water treatment system discharge becoming seldom feasible. Striving to ease the pain of this juggling act, Siltbuster has developed Clarity, a near real-time water quality monitoring and reporting system.”
The result of 18 months of development, numerous field trials and significant customer feedback, Clarity offers data logging of discharged water but more significantly real-time alarm notifications either via SMS (text-message) or email should the equipment detect non-compliant water passing the probes.
Whilst data logging on its own provides a crucial audit trail that can be used to prove site compliance to regulators, it’s the real time alarm notifications and control which look to revolutionise water management. Using a purely data logging approach runs inherent risk as very often the data is downloaded at irregular intervals and typically if breaches have occurred it is only realised after the event and potentially because of regulatory investigation.
However, Clarity by Siltbuster differs by giving plant operators a heads up that the system needs attention (and shutting down the feed pumps if so desired) in order to maintain compliance with any discharge criteria that might be in place. Site managers and operatives can continue with their daily tasks without the need for constant supervision safe in the knowledge alerts will be issued should the discharge water exceed predefined limits, but crucially before consent level has been breached, providing crucial time to rectify any issues and preventing a possible notifiable pollution event.
Any number of key parameters can be logged and monitored (for both inlet and/or outlet waters), be that Total Suspended Solids, pH, Flow rate, Dissolved Oxygen, Conductivity, Temperature to name a few.
Accessible via both a Web and Mobile App interface, Clarity enables Environmental Advisors to maintain a high level overview of multiple sites compliance (via a red, amber, green flagging system) whilst still having access to exact performance data where required. Historical records can be extracted via the search functionality and the data can be exported as a .csv file, providing robust evidence of permit compliance.
Clarity has been piloted by a number of clients including Costain prior to its formal launch. Gordon Williams, Environmental Engineer at Costain, details the positive impact the new system has had on the business: “Clarity allows us to observe compliance and system performance in a live view. The Costain Gas Business currently has two 3-stage treatment systems in place on gas construction projects, dewatering deep excavations. The regulatory arrangements at these sites are very stringent and we have to discharge under two bespoke EA permits with tight limits defined for suspended solids and pH. Assurance around compliance has increased tenfold since we implemented the Clarity by Siltbuster system. Not only that, but the interface has an easy to navigate built in data download capability allowing the user to download historic data from a defined time interval.”
Available straight away, Clarity can either be retrofitted to existing treatment systems or fitted to new hires and sales.
