Slashdot Mirror
Fish Work as Anti-terror Agents
sdriver writes "San Francisco's bluegills went to work about a month ago, guarding the drinking water of more than 1 million people from substances such as cyanide, diesel fuel, mercury and pesticides. "There's no known manmade sensor that can do the same job as the bluegill." The New York City Department of Environmental Protection reported at least one instance in which the system caught a toxin before it made it into the water supply."
This was done in Sydney 15 years ago, when they still drew their water supply via an open canal. The Water Board had identified a risk fronm the canal that wound its way through teh suburbs and was very easy to get access to, so they put in a fish tank connected to the canal to pick up anything toxic that might have found its way into the water. In this cas the fish were Macquarie perch (I think).
There was a video camera trained on the tank and the operators in the control room could cut off the canal if they noticed the fish were dead.
There was a guy whose job it was to feed the fish and run the dechlorination system that removed the chlorine from the water going into the tank, since that's also toxic to fish.
One weekend , he forgot to top up the sodium thiosulphate solution that was used for this purpose, and all the fish died from chlorine poisoning some time on Sunday night when it ran out.
That was bad enough, but it was Monday morning before the operators noticed.
They don't use that system anymore. The canal has been filled in and there is a pipeline and a fully filtered treatment plant.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
That should unclog the tubes too!
If it ain't broke, it needs more features!
Clearly what we need to do is just release fish into the computer systems as well. You mean send them through the tubes?