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In September 2004, a microbial source tracking (MST) began in the Wissahickon Creekwatershed in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a collaborative effort between DrexelUniversity and the Philadelphia Water Department. This on-going study aims to determine thesources of fecal contamination in this 64 square mile watershed, impacting the WissahickonCreek flowing through Fairmount Park. Over the last forty years, and particularly since the CleanWater Act (1972), improvements have been made in the quality of the water system. However,despite this overall improvement in quality, issues of microbial water contamination remain.Given the population density and economic influence the river has on the region, there is a needto continue the improvement of the creek water quality.The laboratory analyses used to implement this MST program are a combination of phenotypicand genotypic methods, referred to as a "toolbox" approach. The genotypic method usingpolymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been developed, based on previous MST studies. As acomplementary procedure, the phenotypic method currently in use is antibiotic resistance analysis(ARA) and a standard operating procedure for this method has also been developed. Both ofthese methods are termed library-dependent, where bacteria from the water body of interest arecompared to a library of genotypic (i.e. PCR) and phenotypic (i.e. ARA) responses. The decisionto choose library-based methods (which require extensive work to develop the library beforetesting water samples) was based on literature reviews of previous MST studies. Includes 13 references, tables, figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 11/01/2008 Number of Pages: 25File Size: 1 file , 2 MB