FAIRHOPE, Ala. — It’s no secret that contaminants continue to plague Fish River, as well as other coastal freshwater rivers and streams. Sediment, nutrients and mercury contribute to the problem, but bacteria is among the greatest concerns officials have.

Fecal material from humans, household pets, domestic livestock and wildlife finds it way into the water, often affecting seafood and sickening people who consume it. Swimming in water contaminated by fecal bacteria can cause skin problems, and even more severe illnesses if the water is ingested.

Chances are you’ve seen the Alabama Department of Public Health’s color-coded beach monitoring signs that indicate the bacterial levels in the water at more than two dozen beaches on both sides of Mobile Bay. The question is where do these bacterial pollutants come from, and how can they be stopped?

A new study could come up with an answer, thanks to the combined efforts of the Weeks Bay Foundation (WBF); Weeks Bay Reserve (WBR) — a partnership between the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources State Lands Division and the National Estuarine Research Reserve System of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP), the University of West Alabama (UWA) and the Weeks Bay Watershed Project (WBWP).

The agencies initiated a point source pollution research program to identify the origin of bacteria found in the waterway. MBNEP and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified the upper river as a priority area for projects that address water pollution, and as a result provided grant money to conduct the research.

Mike Shelton, WBR watershed coordinator and one of the research leaders, said, “What we’re doing right now is looking at an important area of the river identified as a concern by MBNEP. It’s a manageable size of the watershed. We’re going to develop techniques and a pathogen management plan we can develop for other parts of the river.”

Fish River is included on the Clean Water Act list of impaired water as contaminated with pathogen bacteria. The river is one of the two main tributaries to Weeks Bay, designated as an Outstanding National Resource Water, and it is one of the 10 Most Endangered Places in the South as reported last month by the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The research project will be carried out with help from a scientist and student from UWA and volunteers.

Dr. Brian Burnes of UWA will perform a portion of the identification using antibiotic resistance analysis. The process examines the way E. coli from the water grows or does not grow in the presence of different kinds of antibiotic. Much has been reported of the resistance to antibiotics potentially harmful bacteria can develop. The source tracking method relies on antibiotic resistance to tell about a bacterium’s source.

“Because humans are prescribed certain kinds of antibiotics, E. coli are going to develop resistance to that level,” Shelton said. “Even wildlife will exhibit some type of resistance to some doses and some types of antibiotics. We’ll compare the resistance to known bacteria and determine with statistical massaging the bacteria came from a specific source.”

Bacteria have the ability to develop resistance to antibiotics when exposed to the compounds over time. Bacteria in the digestive track of a human would have a certain resistance, for example, and those from different animals would have a different resistance pattern. Burnes will examine the resistance patterns from those known pathogen sources and compare them to bacteria from Fish River.

Shelton said when the source is identified, better management practices can be applied to the problem and reduce or eliminate the pollution. He is coordinating water sample collection.

Sample sites are located from Fish River’s confluence with Polecat Creek north to Interstate 10. The sampling will occur at seasonal increments at both normal flow in the river and under high flow conditions, such as after heavy rainfall.

Both the reserve and the foundation have long been involved in not only protecting the Weeks Bay watershed, but also in educating area residents about the ways to prevent water pollution in the first place.

As part of that ongoing effort, Shelton said volunteers are needed to host a rain gauge at their home and report heavy rain events, and if possible also go to one of the designated testing points on the river and take samples. Training, equipment and supplies will be provided.

“We would like them to monitor rainfall. A certain amount triggers a sampling event,” he said. “The rainfall is going to flush whatever is on the ground. We want to find out what kind of things we see under baseflow conditions, and what we get when we have a high-water event.”

Current fecal coliform monitoring conducted by Weeks Bay Water Watch includes locations spanning much of the accessible reaches of Fish River and several tributaries. Counts of bacteria in the upper river remain periodically high, but typically following rain events.

Shelton said, “Once you have reasonable certainty what the predominant source is for these cells, you develop strategies to address them. For domestic livestock, look at the landscape, work with these (ranchers) to get that fixed. We’ll apply best management practices targeted at the sources.”

Paul Dowsey, an experienced Weeks Bay Reserve volunteer, has been working with Shelton on the source tracking project since October. He collects rainfall data and E. coli samples when adequate rainfall occurs. As one might expect, data at the site near Marlow indicates that high levels of pathogens are present after significant rainfall events.

There is a great need to better identify sources so that better management programs may be developed to address the water quality problem, according to Shelton. Potential sources like pasture grazing remain, he noted, but with continuing development occurring in the upper Fish River watershed, additional sources like urban storm water runoff become more prevalent.

“There’s a lot of potential sources out there, and we want to use our limited resources to address them, and not just shotgun them on the ground,” Shelton added.

To volunteer for the point source pollution study, call Mike Shelton at (251) 928-9792, or e-mail him at michael.shelton@dcnr.alabama.gov.