AWWA WQTC65728

Simple, rapid and reliable fecal indicator tests are needed to better monitor and manage the fecal impacts and sanitary quality of waters with human uses. The new US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Ground Water Rule uses coliphages and other fecal indicators (E. coli, enterococci) to monitor the quality of groundwater used in public water systems. This study addressed needs of the Ground Water Rule by creating a rapid and simple 3-hour microbial water quality monitoring system for F+ coliphages as fecal indicators. Water samples are processed by a 3-hour F+ coliphage culture enrichment which is a modified version of USEPA method 1601 for groundwater. The research hypothesis was that modifying USEPA method 1601 by increasing initial E. coli levels in enrichments would decrease the total coliphage culture time from 16-24 hours to 60-360 minutes. This development and evaluation of a rapid F+ coliphage culture enrichment and novel immunological agglutination test provides a new tool for same-day monitoring and decisions on the microbiological quality of water. This work also improves access to F+ coliphage detection and source tracking by making it simpler, as affordable as bacteriological analysis, rapid, and potentially field-portable. This new coliphage method can be applied to monitor groundwater quality under the USEPA Ground Water Rule, which affects about 150,000 public water systems that use groundwater and other mixed groundwater/surface water systems. Includes 15 references.