Bacterial Source Tracking in the Vernon River Watershed

Proceedings of the 2007 Georgia Water Resources Conference, March 27-29, 2007, Athens, Georgia.The Vernon River basin drains 16,000 acres of densely populated, urbanized area that includes portions of the City of Savannah and Chatham County and all of the City of Vernonburg. The upper reaches of the basin are comprised of several urban storm water drainage canals, including Casey Canal, which discharge into Hayners Creek, one of many small feeder creeks draining to the Vernon River. Hayners Creek and Casey Canal are listed on Georgia’s 303(d) list as not supporting their designated Fishing classification due to fecal coliform, dissolved oxygen, and fish consumption guideline water quality criteria. Conventional methods to determine the source of fecal coliform bacteria have been unsuccessful to date. Stakeholders within the Vernon River Watershed, including the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, the cities of Savannah and Vernonburg, the Chatham County Heath Department, and Integrated Science & Engineering, Inc, understand that is critically important to identify the sources of fecal contamination in order to develop a workable management plan to eliminate the identified sources. Through Georgia Environmental Protection Division 319 grant funding assistance, the Vernon River Stakeholders’ Project Team will utilize Assessing Multiple Antibiotic Resistance (MAR) and Ribosomal RNA (rRNA) Fingerprinting to track and identify the source of bacterial contamination in the Vernon River basin. This project will also evaluate viral tagging of fecal bacteria in septic systems as an effective indicator of septic functionality. Once the source(s) of fecal contamination are identified through the bacterial source tracking program, the Project Team will develop best management practices to address and eliminate those identified sources. Once established, these BMPs will likely be incorporated into the future TMDL Implementation Plan for the Vernon River basin. Because this basin is typical of coastal communities in the region, the BMPs developed through this project will likely be applicable on a regional scale.Sponsored and Organized by: U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Natural Resources Conservation Service, The University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of TechnologyThis book was published by the Institute of Ecology, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2202. The views and statements advanced in this publication are solely those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of The University of Georgia, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Georgia Water Research Institute as authorized by the Water Resources Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-397) or the other conference sponsors