Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID LA_2025_Bivins

Rapid Low-Cost Assessment of Sewage Contamination in Surface Waters via Fluorescent Dissolved Organic Matter (fDOM)

Institute: Louisiana
Year Established: 2025 Start Date: 2026-01-01 End Date: 2026-12-31
Total Federal Funds: $18,590 Total Non-Federal Funds: $19,027

Principal Investigators: Aaron Bivins

Project Summary: Traditional microbiology methods for measuring fecal contamination in environmental waters take too long to produce data and are too expensive for widescale near real-time monitoring. Recently, a method of assessing sewage contamination using a constituent known as fluorescent dissolved organic matter (fDOM) has shown promise for discerning sewage contamination in surface waters. We proposed to assess the performance of fDOM compared to a gold-standard human sewage fecal tracking marker (HF183/BacR287) by measuring both in 100 on-site wastewater treatment system effluent samples and 50 surface water samples. Using the data produced, a machine learning model will be implemented to attempt to predict HF183 concentration based on fDOM characteristics. If successful, the findings could pave the way for near real-time to real-time water surveillance for human sewage.