Bacteria are the primary cause of water quality impairments in Texas water bodies and are the source of impairment in 197 of the 419 impaired water bodies in the state. General information about bacteria and their sources are known; however, specific information about bacteria in the landscape is needed. In September 2006, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board charged a seven person Bacteria Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Task Force with assessing how bacteria impairments are currently being addressed and determining what types of information are needed to improve this methodology. In the report from the Bacteria TMDL Task Force, one of their specific charges was to develop a roadmap for further scientific research needed to reduce uncertainty about how bacteria behave under different conditions in Texas. In developing this report, several needed studies were identified that would provide needed information about the fate and transport of bacteria in the landscape.
This project was tailored to specifically address some of these study areas. Specifically, the project will identify, characterize, and quantify E. coli loads resulting from various sources in an impaired watershed, monitor survival, growth, re-growth, and die-off of E. coli under different environmental conditions, and monitor re-suspension of E. coli in streams. These evaluations will shed much needed light on the growth, fate, and transport of bacteria within a landscape and better illustrate what environmental factors influence these processes. Educating stakeholders by disseminating qualitative and quantitative information acquired in this monitoring and demonstration project is also an integral part of the project; multiple publications that summarize finding will be developed and made available to the public. Information gleaned from this project will provide much needed knowledge relevant to modeling bacterial life cycles, their ability to survive and regenerate and their impacts on water quality. A secondary objective of this proposal is to strengthen spatially explicit load allocation tools and validate and improve process-based pathogen transport models used in TMDL development and implementation by providing scientific data collected in this project.