Research & Science Note 7: Microbial Source Tracking of Fecal Coliform Bacteria in the Milk River

Background

The most visual and publicly scrutinized site has been at Writing on Stone Provincial Park (WOSPP); being a public beach site operated by the
provincial government, it is sampled weekly by park staff and analyzed at the Provincial Health Lab where it’s monitored for total coliform. The beach has been subject to occasional health risk advisory due to E. coli concentrations which exceed recommended guidelines for
recreation.

The local farming and ranching community has been implicated for the perceived problems, though little to no work had been previously
done to characterize the concerns.

In response, the MRWCC approached Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) to look into a potential project to investigate the
concern, and research fecal contamination concerns within the watershed. This discussion lead to the establishment of a Microbial source tracking project to determine the main sources of E.coli along the Milk River, and to “fingerprint” the fecal sources detected.

The objective of this study is to identify and quantify the major sources of fecal contamination in the Milk River.

Given that water quality guidelines are driven by E. coli concentrations, this study will utilize E. coli fingerprinting as a microbial source tracking method.

Traditional water quality monitoring methods only measure the amount of fecal indicator bacteria. They do not identify the source
of the contamination.

E. coli are generally not harmful, but if high levels of these organisms are found in water, other bacteria that are harmful to humans may also be present.