KA10020 PeatStop - Sustainable runoff water management in Karelia and Kainuu

The project PeatStop brings possibilities for renewing runoff water management solutions in Karelia CBC programme area. During the project, the environmental loads caused by runoff water are monitored and physical filtering installations will be implemented respectively in the city of Kajaani. More specifically, PeatStop aims at the development of transboundary solutions to improve the condition of urban water bodies through the introduction of effective monitoring and the use of new environmentally safe runoff water filtering solutions. Project participants have strong background expertise for water purification solutions.

In Kajaani, the main interest is to mitigate further eutrophication of a pond Kaupunginlampi, the pond located in a very popular recreational area near the city center. It has been suffering from eutrophication and traces or pollution, mainly due to the ingress of surface rainfall and runoff water outlets into it, washing away pollution from the surface of the city and roads. The number of other types of contamination caused by runoff water is not solely understood at the moment, which underlines the need for actual contaminant level monitoring. The runoff water management pilot will help the aquatic environment in target area to recover, which gives a good reference for future planning in similar targets. City of Kajaani is planning to invest in other pond recovery activities responding to urgent needs and the proposed project supports these activities by providing solutions to cut the further load caused by runoff water. 

Prior to March 2022, Russian Karelia was also a part of the project activities area. In Petrozavodsk, the main interest was to prevent oil leakages in lake Onega in order to ensure the natural water quality in the recreational beach area and to prevent possible oil contamination near drinking water intake area. Due to Russia's invasion and war in Ukraine, the activities and all organizational cooperation with Russian project partners were halted.

The long-term maintenance procedure and responsibilities for the pilot sites are defined as a part of the project, since very often the lack of understanding for maintenance needs decreases the capacity in the long run. Disseminating the experience and results of these pilots supports the initiation of similar development and investments in cities throughout the Karelia CBC area.

In the pilot cases the references from the water quality monitoring solutions give a valuable, practical expertise and experiences on the available monitoring solutions, which could be utilized and adapted in various cases to manage the environmental load in urban and industrial areas.

 

Project news

Our consortium represents a combination of special expertise, which is needed in bringing the change we are expecting. You are very welcome to contact us and discuss about collaboration possibilities.

KAMK University of Applied Sciences operates as project leader and provides expertise for novel environmental monitoring solutions plus recycled adsorbent material development for water purification purposes. City of Kajaani is the actual investor with will to adapt the proposed advanced solutions in order to conservate the status of the fine local natural water resources.

The combination of the special expertise  provides possibilities to grow a unique combination of high-level expertise for further future collaboration in the field of runoff water management.

Project partners have solid collaboration networks, which allows to gain best practises to be utilized in the project. 

More information about the partners of project PeatStop:

KAMK University of Applied Sciences: https://www.kamk.fi/en

The city of Kajaani: www.kajaani.fi

Prior to March 2022 also Regional Company Water and Ecology LLC and the City of Petrozavodsk were a part of the project group.

In 2020 and 2021, in the PeatStop project, intensive runoff water nutrient load measurements were carried out around Kajaani areas to determine the worst problems and sources of nutrient loads. You can read about the measurement results for 2020 in the report below.

Report on runoff water nutrient loads, Kajaani 2020

-----------------------------------

In project PeatStop, we aim to achieve a good situational awareness of the existing environmental load caused by runoff water. On this tab, we will publish conclusive reports and information on possible new monitoring methods, e.g., participatory observation applications and innovation for real-time monitoring.

Interested in participatory observations as a monitoring method? Feel free to read up on some background info via the following link in Procedia Environment Journal. The article has been produced as part of PeatStop activities.

PARTICIPATORY MONITORING AS A SUPPORTIVE TOOL FOR BETTER SITUATIONAL AWARENESS IN CONTAMINANTS’ LEAKAGE AND PREVENTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION

------------------------------------

The PeatStop project has also developed a mobile application for environmental observation. For now, the app isn't public, but is tested within the project groups to make sure it works as well as it should. This means it might still change a bit, but here's how it looks for now!

PeatStop app mid-development
Screenshots of the environmental monitoring app being developed in the PeatStop project

The app is designed for registering both actual measurement results and also sensory evaluation related to water quality. Results are shown on a map with a time stamp. In the future we aim for further development in providing an information service, which gives indicative information on water quality issues for various stakeholders.

But, before the PeatStop's own app development is done, we have to have options, right? And we do! Envirate, developed by the Finnish Treebuddy team, is available both online and as a mobile application.

Envirate ss
A screenshot of the Envirate app

Envirate is a functional, simple application that allows the user to enter information about their environment regardless of location, based on the sense of smell, sight, and hearing. The entered information is registered in the system, and you can later examine it on the map, where the information appears as a colored button. The color of the piece is determined by the information entered; If the environment looks good, the button is green - and again, the more concerning the findings, the redder it becomes.

 

Outi Laatikainen
project leader, Senior R&D Expert
firstname.lastname@kamk.fi
Tel. +358 44 710 1662

KAMK Kajaani University of Applied Sciences
P.O.Box 52 Ketunpolku 1, TIETO 1
FI-87101 Kajaani, Finland