Water quality testing on the Lawson's Fork (9/13/01)

After our invited expert, Dr. Jack Turner of USC-Spartanburg, gave a short lecture about his years of research on the water quality of Lawson's Fork, we headed into the field to do our own testing. We tested pH, turbidity, and fecal coliform bacteria. The latter test provided some particularly interesting results, so read on!

		The LaMotte shallow water monitoring kit is fairly easy to use.

Dr. Turner describes the turbidity testing to Prof. Lane (on the right), Josh, Amelia and Jason (in the background).		Carter conducts the turbidity test.

...

Hey, Amelia and Alan, the stream is down here!

Upon our arrival at the stream (at the sandy beach access along the Cottonwood Trail), we all smelled the faint odor of raw sewage and were suspicious that there may be a leaking septic tank somewhere along the stream. Because the presence of E. coli bacteria may be indicative of sewage discharge into the creek, we collected water samples at five different locations for fecal coliform testing. The strongest odor appeared to be coming from a small rivulet running into the Lawson's Fork. Therefore, the students identified the rivulet as the central sampling site along with two locations upstream and two locations downstream from the rivulet (all approximately 20 yards apart).

The "stinky rivulet" team (Amelia, Kris, and Prof. Lane) collects the sample we predict may be contaminated with bacteria from a leaking septic tank.		A downstream sample is collected by Park, Carter and Copeland.
		Tiffany, Ginny and Erin make up the upstream team.

Procedure for fecal coliform assay:

We combined a 1 ml sample of water from one of four different locations along the Lawson's Fork with EasygelTM Coliscan medium. We then poured the mix onto Easygel petri dishes (pretreated with color indicator) and incubated the dishes for 48 hours at room temperature.

The sample from the "stinky rivulet" was the only sample that came up positive for E. coli. Although the quality of the photo below isn't great, the "blue" E. coli colonies have been circled so that you can distinguish them from among the other "pink/purple" fecal coliform colonies. While our testing is not conclusive, we now have some evidence to provide to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources suggesting that the "stinky rivulet" is polluting the Lawson's Fork!

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