Throughout Otsego Lake's watershed, most residents rely on septic tanks as a source of wastewater disposal. Along the northwest shore of the lake, there are many houses situated closely together. Ground water degradation has occurred in many areas having high densities of septic tanks systems, with the degradation exemplified by high concentrations of nitrates, bacteria and other contaminants (...

Research on microbiological groundwater quality was conducted in Chile in a rural watershed that has almost no other water source. Forty-two wells were randomly selected and levels of indicator bacteria total coliforms (TC), fecal coliforms (FC), and fecal streptococci (FS) were repeatedly measured during the four seasons of 2005. The aim of this study was to characterize microbiological ground...

Predicting the presence of enteric viruses in surface waters is a complex modeling problem. Multiple water quality parameters that indicate the presence of human fecal material, the load of fecal material, and the amount of time fecal material has been in the environment are needed. This paper presents the results of a multiyear study of raw-water quality at the inlet of a potable-water plant t...

Due to the difficulties in testing for specific pathogens, water samples are tested for the presence of nonpathogenic indicator organisms to determine whether a water supply has been contaminated by fecal material. An implicit assumption in this approach is that where pathogenic microorganisms are present fecal indicator organisms are present as well; yet surprisingly few studies have been cond...

INTRODUCTION Advances in molecular methods provide new opportunities for directly measuring pathogens or host-associated markers of fecal pollution instead of relying on fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) alone for beach water quality monitoring. Adoption of new indicators depends on identifying relationships between either the presence or concentration of the indicators and illness among swimmers....