New Machine Quietly Cleans Milwaukee’s Water

The TrashVeyor in the Kinnickinnic River. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Milwaukee’s waterways could look cleaner this year thanks to a new machine quietly toiling away underneath a southside bridge.

No, it’s not a mechanical troll. Aquarius Systems has developed a new surface water waste collection system, “the TrashVeyor.”

Two 100-foot-long booms in the Kinnickinnic River collect the waste, a mix of litter and natural debris, and the flow of the river pushes it toward slowly spinning metal arms, which lift it onto a 36-foot-long, five-foot-wide conveyor belt and, ultimately, drop it into a dumpster.

“It’s intended to run 24/7, semi-autonomously,” said Aquarius Systems engineering manager Mike Peterman. “We have cameras that monitor it, and we also have sensors in the system that can shut the machine if it goes over a certain level of force.”

And based on a demonstration Friday morning, it will have plenty to collect. Overnight, the booms collected a wide array of bottles, cans, sticks and a very large plastic bag.

An October test, which included approximately two weeks of operation, collected 1.5 tons of trash. It was enough to fill approximately one-third of a 40-foot dumpster, said Peterman.

“Whatever trash we can take out of the system is less trash that is going to be in fish, animals and ourselves,” said Harbor District Inc. Executive Director Tia Torhorst. The organization is supporting the effort and intends to install a permanent trash collector in the future. “I think we’re very conscious of the fact that microplastics are now a thing, and you know there’s about a credit card of microplastics that we ingest every week due to it being in our water, soil and air. Every little bit will count to get that out of the system so that we’re all healthier and that isn’t impacting our health.”

Because it’s collecting surface trash, there is also expected to be a visible impact. “We want to have it be a beautiful place that businesses want to come and have their employees in the district, and it’s a really great recreational opportunity down here on the KK,” said Torhost.

The equipment is located on a Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) combined sewer overflow site, 2644 S. Chase Ave. It is scheduled to remain there through October, when the pilot effort will conclude.

The effort is being financed by a $400,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a state grant from the Wisconsin Center for Technology Commercialization.

It’s just the latest product for the North Prairie, Wisconsin-based company.

Aquarius previously developed the fully mobile Lynyrd Skymmr boat for MMSD. The vessel can be spotted cruising the city’s waterways, collecting trash after heavy rain events. Similar vessels, said Peterman, have been deployed in Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Greece, Italy and Norway.

Peterman said the latest device has been designed to handle changes in water levels, which have already occurred.”The water level is surprisingly not steady,” he said. The volume of waste is expected to spike in spring, when water is high, and fall, when water levels begin to drop.

Backed by a 2020 EPA grant, the Harbor District intends to install a permanent trash collection machine closer to where the river meets the inner harbor, on a different MMSD site near W. Becher Street. An estimate from the grant award predicted it could collect 75 tons annually. Torhorst said her organization would like to work with Aquarius on the project, but is awaiting an environmental cleanup to occur as part of the much larger effort to remove the federal “Area of Concern” designation from Milwaukee’s waterways.

The public can watch the new machine work by looking east from the S. Chase Avenue bridge over the Kinnickinnic River. “It’s kind of boring,” said Peterman, underselling the potential as several people watched a large plastic bag that resembled a pillow go up the conveyor.

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