WC148 MayJune 2026 - Magazine - Page 33
INNOVATION
The Problem Solver
Lethbridge treatment plant techie builds sewage exploring “drone boat”
BY WARREN FREY
ETHBRIDGE’S WASTEWATER
TREATMENT PLANT is taking inspections to the next level with consumer-level
parts and human ingenuity.
Lee Allen, a senior system integrator
at the Lethbridge Wastewater Treatment Plant
(WWTP) used his off-hours to design and build a
remote-controlled airboat drone to detect hydrogen sulfide zin wastewater channels.
“I’ve been a tinkerer my whole life and liked
robotics but it’s hard to get a job in that field, so I
studied electronics and industrial controls and was
hired at the wastewater plant about 14 years ago,”
Allen said.
“We started doing small jobs with Arduinos
(an open-source electronics platform). We would
never use it in the plant proper for industrial stuff
BUT for little jobs like this, it’s a cost-effective
way to go,” he said.
Allen built the boat to maneuver in hard-toreach areas of underwater channels that carry
wastewater underground. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S)
levels can build in those channels, but they are
inaccessible to workers.
“We have a lot of covered channels and due
to the nature of our plant there’s a high amount
of H2S already in the wastewater and some the
channels were experiencing heightened H2S corrosion,” City of Lethbridge wastewater treatment
plant manager Adam Campbell said.
“There are a lot of camera systems on the market but nothing we could find that met the need
of exploring some of these channels in a safe way
where we were guaranteed to get the equipment
back. Even if I found something, we’re in Lethbridge. We don’t always have access to that and if
we do, we’re not flying someone in from Toronto
for a simple inspection,” he added.
City of Lethbridge
L
Warren Frey is
Associate Editor of
Water Canada.
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
Top: The drone boat was built with o昀昀-the-shelf
electronics and open-source software at a cost
of approximately $1,000.
Lethbridge Wastewater Treatment Plant senior
system operator Lee Allen built a drone boat
in his spare time to inspect channels that may
contain high amounts of hydrogen sul昀椀de.
WATER C AN ADA • M AY/JUNE 2026
33
