Sun, Nov 22 2009
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Many area streams, creeks show high bacteria levels The Joplin Globe"Our position is that there is a public health threat, and it needs to be addressed," he said.
They sample at Morrow Mill, Francis Street, Tucker's Ford, Kellogg Lake and at an unnamed tributary near the Butterball plant, and have for more than two years. They have often found levels of E. coli at 2,419.6 colonies per 100 milliliters of water, or more than 10 times the federal standard of 235 colonies, and nearly 20 times the state standard of 126. The level could be higher, but according to Christian and Frank Martinez, an adult volunteer with the team, that is the highest level that can be measured by their equipment. The Stream Team has even held public forums to alert the community to its findings, but so far nothing has been posted as unsafe. Cindy Davies, director of the Southwest Regional Office for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, noted in a letter to the Globe this spring the team's "inaccurate data" and also said stream team members were not correctly interpreting results. But in a letter to the stream team written earlier, Davies also said their "sample data indicates that there is an area of concern in the bottomlands." Dye testing In an interview, Davies said her agency has followed up on problems this summer. Steps taken by some industries, such as changing out floor drains, resulted in visual improvement in the water quality to an unnamed tributary, but not to the E. coli levels. She said that came about only after city of Carthage employees, using cameras and dye testing, in conjunction with DNR environmental services staff, began looking for a source of the bacteria. "The dye showed up in the spring almost immediately," she said, referring to a test conducted on a wastewater line. She said the line was installed incorrectly years ago and has since been replaced by the city. After that was done in May, bacteria levels at that site dropped. The latest sample, which Davies said came from June, was 166 colonies, and most of the samples taken after the repair have tested between 100 and 400 colonies of E coli per 100 milliliters of water. That's still elevated, but Davies added: "I think we've solved the majority of the problem. It has taken quite a bit to solve some of this. Right now, we are not seeing anything that points us toward a particular point source." She said any bacteria in the water today is probably coming from a non-point source, such as runoff from cattle operations or nearby septic systems operating improperly. "There you get into a much harder area to deal with," Davies said. The stream team, however, has continued to find high readings for both E. coli and enterococci at that site almost weekly. The mean for the six tests conducted at that location in July was nearly 521; the mean of three tests in August exceeded 1,200 colonies. Both stream team and DNR officials said they will continue to monitor water quality, with Christian adding the stream team hopes to do DNA analysis of the bacteria later this year in an attempt to identify a source of the problem. 
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