Mark Nowosad calls his water-sampling gizmo an instrument, but that's an understatement.

It's a "multi-parameter instrument package" -- a cluster of sensors and measuring devices that feed a continuous flow of information through 12 separate channels into a data collector.

"We've got something unique with this technology," says the DIAND water quality technologist.

The instrument was developed in the late 1990s, by DIAND'S Mining Inspection Division and Okanagan University College, to collect more and better information about the impact of placer mine effluent might have on streams. Eventually the information will be used to help set effluent standards for Yukon placer mines.

Dangling in a stream, the instrument package measures and records such things as concentrations of suspended solids and settle-able solids, the clay fraction index in the water, conductivity, temperature, the pH or acidity and basicity of the water, stream velocity, and a handful of other indicators of water quality.

Each instrument package was desigend to allow for the continuous collection of background data pertaining to individual streams and specific mining areas. Until now, that information has been very hard to obtain. And since information is recorded over long periods of time, it's possible to see patterns of seasonal change and the results of events like floods or spills.

"We can take a snapshot of the water quality in the river, along its entire length, every 10 minutes," says Nowosad.

DIAND and the Okanagan University College have been tinkering with the instrument package and improving it over the years. In a pilot program in 1998, five instruments were set up, hanging into streams from wire ropes and cables, much like clothes on a clothesline.

In 1999, a floating version of the instrument was tested. Thirty-five instrument packages attached to little yellow rafts were tethered in the Big Creek, McQuesten, and Forty Mile River drainage basins. They collected the equivalent of 196,000 individual water samples over four months.

The next year, however, was a disaster. Heavy rain and floods marked the summer of 2000. The little rafts that had worked so well in 1999 couldn't handle river levels that rose as much as three metres overnight.

"We basically blew out the stations on the Forty Mile," Nowosad says. "One ended up 160 kilometres downstream in Alaska. One was destroyed."

Nowosad and colleagues Bill LeBarge and Tanya Gates spent most of the summer retrieving and repairing equipment. What information they were able to save was fragmented and disjointed.

Last summer, they went back to the same locations. This time they abandoned the rafts and anchored the instruments on land again, hanging the sensors into the water on supports that look like fishing rods. They also attached additional sensors to each instrument package. Restricted to six instruments because of limited funds, they nevertheless recorded the equivalent of 254,000 individual samples.

Making all that information usable is a challenge, says Nowosad.

"It takes a long time to produce a report, due to the sheer volume of data," he points at one season's report that fills a binder about 15 centimetres thick.

Nevertheless, the quantity and quality of their data is attracting attention. A foreign country has already approached the Yukon-Okanagan group about monitoring its placer streams, and Nowosad says the instrument package has been adapted to monitor stormwater drainage, run-off in logged and reforested areas, agricultural run-off, and the downstream effects that road construction can have on adjacent streams and rivers.

The developers are also working on a simple version that could be used to warn placer miners that their mine effluent is approaching the legal limit, and a hand-held version to help geologists search for mineral deposits.

For more information, go to www.geology.gov.yk.ca/projects/surficial.html and follow the links to "Placer Deposit and Mining Discharge Sampling" or contact Mark Nowosad at Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Whitehorse, (867) 667-3189.