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10/28/2025
WT Staff
 Got water questions? Give us a call at 877-52-WATER (877-529-2837), or email us at info@wtny.us
Tuesday, October 28, 2025 317 pm EDT
Competitors got together to address most common problems in the water testing industry
Today, students and citizen scientists are equipped with self-cleaning, self-calibrating water sensor technology
Complacency in the water testing establishment left a void just big enough for nature to abhor. Where legacy water testing equipment has been costly to acquire, complex to use and maintain, a whole new roster of user-friendly and affordable water technologies has emerged. Aquatic Sensors has broken the status quo in the water testing industry, for the sake of the clean water mission.
When Andrea Zappe and Patrick Sanders first faced-off as rival trade show exhibitors at the ASLO conference in 2001, each one was already accomplished in the field of optical fluorometry, employed by competing players in a global growth industry. Demand for water testing services and technologies is increasing everywhere, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence. The fastest growth area is Asia-Pacific, however the largest market is the USA, estimated value $4.5 billion in 2025, projected to reach $6 billion by 2030. The market has been and remains dominated by a handful of very large players, including Swiss multinational SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance), Bureau Veritas, ALS, Intertek and Eurofins.
Environmental monitoring has long been the domain of governments, being responsible for public safety and resourced for the safeguarding of public drinking water supplies. Municipal water plants require accredited lab testing to determine when tap water is safe to drink after a water main break. State authorities act on certified lab analysis, posting public health advisories for high bacteria levels or toxic algae. Lab analysis by skilled technicians has been the gold standard for certification and verification of water quality results. The large companies mentioned above have dominated this space, running a technical process that can become back-logged and fall behind. With limited options, latency in water testing impacts public safety, perhaps most notably with cyanotoxins results, often a week or more to turn around and report. As conditions around HABs change daily, quality results from a week ago hold little protective benefit in the "now" moment.
By 2022, two career veterans, located in two countries, ran through the memory banks and log books, evaluating personal impact and contributions to their chosen field. Reaching out to connect during this time of reflection, Patrick and Andrea decided to put their ideas together to challenge the industry status-quo. As a start-up, Aquatic Sensors allowed the founders to address long-standing issues with a new and nimble vehicle of their own design. Focused on making the technology accessible to a wider range of clients, Aquatic Sensors supplies and supports acquire water testing equipment from technology developers and manufacturers all over the globe.
When cuts were announced to the budgets of National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Weather Service, National Forest Service, USGS and US EPA early this year, it seemed likely that water quality management would suffer. In May 2025, the federal administration rolled back Safe Drinking Water laws for PFAS, an unprecedented move that accelerated uncertainty concerning the safety of municipal drinking water in the US. The recent federal government shut-down has been another wake-up call, underscoring the urgent need for new and alternative engagements in the water monitoring field. Enter, waves of citizen scientists, equipped with folding field microscopes in their pockets, analytics technology in their cell phones and investigations prompted by curiosity. The timing could not be better.
Aquatic Sensors provides affordable instruments, effective and accurate water testing technologies that calibrate and clean themselves. While results may not be certified, the ability to monitor changes in water quality in real time appeals to a whole new market. Now companies of all sizes and scale can deploy continuous water sensors to monitor wastewater discharges on site. The sensors can be programmed to alert management immediately when a problem is detected. It does not have to be the case that toxic discharges go on unnoticed and unreported for hours and days. Remote telemetry features of the new technologies could one day be mandated by the courts. Clean Water Act violators could be compelled to install sensors programmed to alert water monitoring and compliance authorities of breaches of the discharge permit. NGO's, non-profits and local associations are able to acquire and utilize water testing equipment to monitor the smallest of lakes, even in the most remote locations.
According to Patrick Sanders, the place to begin any new water monitoring program is at the baseline, monitoring the water characteristics to establish local normal over time. With the baseline known, continuous monitoring reveals near real-time changes, catching human-induced factors as they occur. Deployment of fluorometers is useful for measuring properties in the water than fluoresce, including leaking septic tanks. A handy feedback loop for Clean Water Plans, specific sensors detect spikes in soluble nutrients, allowing for tracing back to the source, informing upstream land managers in the watershed.
For industries engaged in Zero Resin Loss targets, a $25,000 flow-through sensor from Ocean Space takes a photo of everything that passes through, taking inventory of microplastics particles and other floating objects from a dock or buoy mount. Turbidity sensors detect disruptions to the sediment, potential erosion upstream caused by construction, flooding or incidental ground disturbance. Sensors for pH catch changes in both directions, water becoming more acidic or more alkaline is equally disruptive to the natural biota, and could indicate a spill or a leak to be addressed.
While a large percentage of the business, as much as 75% supports municipalities in water monitoring, it is a welcome trend to see more private citizens and cooperative entities ordering the equipment. Aquatic Sensors offers products for monitoring salinity, conductivity, pH, temperature, microplastics, nutrients including iron, phosphate and nitrate. Obscape offers PMT modules, mobile power and telemetry units for remote areas, featuring water quality, weather monitoring, rainfall gauges with time lapse cameras supported by cellular or satellite. The uplink maintains contact with the operator's mobile device, programmed to sound alarms and send alerts when thresholds are breached. Many of these sensors are autonomous, self-calibrating and self-cleaning.
The industry has certainly evolved, and water monitoring has been simplified. Accessible, affordable and autonomous technologies have been adopted to such a degree that timely data is now driving water management decisions. With potentially unlimited eyes on all the lakes, there will certainly be a increased demand on data centers. Data centers do use a lot of water, however, this can be managed in a sustainable way if cities employ district energy systems. In the big scheme of things, "environmental monitoring is a blip on the radar of data center usage", says Sanders. More water data cannot be wrong.
See WT Article on disruptive technology for heating and cooling buildings, here.
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