Locating Escherichia coli contamination in a rural South Carolina watershed

One of the problems associated with the use of ambient water quality standards in surface water regulation is the difficulty of identifying and regulating nonpoint source pollution, making such standards unenforceable, especially at the local level. We used the Escherichia coli indicator to locate the most contaminated reaches in rural South Carolina's Bush River watershed (297 km2, 186 stream-km). We divided the watershed into 20 smaller reaches and sampled each reach multiple times, but restricted each sampling round to one day. We located four low order creek reaches, representing just nine stream-km, where we observed geometric mean E. coli densities of over 1250 E. coli/100 mL; in each case, the source of the contamination (riparian grazing of cattle) was easily identifiable. On the Bush River itself, we observed a step change in one reach where geometric means increased from 106 E. coli/100 mL to 565 E. coli/100 mL over the reach's 10 km length. In this case, the sources of contamination were not as obvious as in the lower order streams; in this case, more advanced Microbial Source Tracking techniques will be required to identify the sources. Nevertheless, this sampling protocol helped locate polluted reaches and provided decision-makers with reasonable justifications for concrete action in deciding where (or where not) to install conservation practices and where more sophisticated (and expensive) MST techniques were warranted.