ShareThisBy KEAY DAVIDSON
Fish are being drafted in San Francisco's war against possible terrorist threats to its water supply.
Akin to hospital gadgets that chart a patient's heart rate and breathing, a new water-quality monitoring system automatically analyzes the behavior of eight to 12 bluegill fish in a tank at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's water-treatment plant in Millbrae.
If the computers sense that the fish are upset by something in the water, "the system immediately triggers water samples to be taken, and the staff are alerted by pager and e-mail," said commission spokesman Tony Winnicker.
The monitoring system, which costs $110,000 per unit, was installed in April. The same system has been purchased by New York City, and the U.S. Army is using it at Fort Detrick, Md., home of the military's premier biological warfare research center.
Instruments inside the tank listen for phenomena such as fish coughs.
Like a human who coughs to expel unwanted matter from the respiratory system, fish cough by flexing their gills as a way of clearing unwelcome particles _ say, grains of sand _ from their breathing passages.
Inside the tank, the instruments are so sensitive that they can tell which fish coughed. The instruments transmit their findings to nearby computers, which compare the fish cough rates and other behaviors to their normal behaviors.
For example, if the fish seem to be coughing more than usual, the system automatically alerts staff members. (However, Winnicker noted, there's no screeching alarm or flashing light like in Cold War-era movies about nuclear-weapons crises.)
In the near future, the commission _ which has 2.4 million water customers in the Bay Area _ plans to install tanks with bluegills at a water-treatment plant in Sunol and at one somewhere "upcountry in the Sierra Nevada," said the commission's general manager, Susan Leal.
For security reasons, she and other officials won't reveal the locations of the planned installations. Officials with the commission, the manufacturer, Intelligent Automation Corp. of Poway, Calif., and the Army also declined to give many specifics about what the system can detect and what it can't.
Water systems already routinely use chemical treatments to protect water quality against biological agents such as bacteria. In San Francisco, Winnicker said, regular water testing and treatments provide solid protection against the kinds of water-borne illnesses, such as cholera, that terrorized the 19th century. Not only do regular chemical treatments of the water wipe out biological invaders, but water-monitoring instruments would detect an effort to overwhelm the system by dumping lots of pathogens into it. "We do more than 100,000 water-quality tests every year and hundreds of tests a day throughout the system," he said.
The new system, said Jeff Goodrich, Intelligent Automation's president, is best able to detect non-biological threats such as pesticides, mercury, cyanide, heavy metals, fuel spills and phosphates. "The Army tested this system against 27 toxicants, and it spotted them all," said Bill Lawler, co-founder of the company.
"The fish are monitored 24/7," Winnicker noted. "The fish lead quite happy lives _ they're well fed. Amidst the computers and equipment is a big pile of fish food and treats."
The intelligent Aquatic BioMonitoring System, as it's called, is marketed by Intelligent Automation. The firm developed the system's software to automate techniques previously developed by the Army. The Army holds the patent on the system; Intelligent Automation is the Army's authorized licensee.
