• Clean Water in Guatemala
• Fifth Graders in San Mateo Become Watershed Discovery Investigators
• Raising Local Awareness Through World Water Monitoring Day
• Middle School Students Test the Waters
• New FDA Rules for Testing Bottled Water

Norm Labbe, the Superintendent of the Kennebunk & Kennebunkport Water District in Maine, involves his teenaged children, Laura and Chris, in his volunteer efforts to make third–world drinking water clean and safe.

It all began when Norm and his daughter traveled to Peru as part of a course Laura was taking at the University of Maine. While there, Norm and Laura were taken aback by the chronic absence of safe drinking water, not only for tourists but in particular for local citizens. This third–world experience made an impact on them. After they returned, Norm felt the need to look further into the issue. As an active member of the Kennebunk Rotary Club, he started to research how else they could make a difference.

Norm quickly found out that Guatemala required assistance with its drinking water. Armed with 50 pounds of luggage loaded with water testing equipment, including a portable incubator donated by Kennebunk & Kennebunkport Water District, and other essentials, such as Colilert® reagent and sample collection vessels donated by IDEXX, Norm flew to Guatemala with his daughter Laura and his son Chris.

Over 80% of the 2000 residents of the village of Concepcion suffer from intestinal diseases, including parasites, caused primarily by unclean water. But using Colilert, it was soon discovered that all the local water sources tested positive for E. coli. The Labbes then built biological water filters to create safe drinking water. The filters consist of 55-gallon drums with screens, sand and other accessories that remove the coliform bateria, parasites, turbidity and color from the water. One filter can clean up to 300 gallons of water each day.

The Labbes then got to work teaching local volunteers and citizens how to use Colilert to test the water. The Colilert tests clearly demonstrated to the local citizens that the only local safe drinking water was what had passed through the biological filters. As a result, the local citizens have embraced the use of filtered water and have created a waiting list for filter installations throughout the community. To date, nearly all of the village’s 20 neighborhood wells are now producing safe, filtered drinking water. It is hoped that by the summer of 2010, the intestinal disease issue plaguing this village will be history.

The Labbes plan on making such trips in the future to help wherever they can. For Chris and Laura, these experiences have shown that they have the power to help those in need and create a better future.

Carolann Towe, a resource specialist with the San Mateo Resource Conservation District in California, spends her time working in watersheds to try to identify sources of fecal bacterial contamination. Her career is focused on making water safer by testing each water source with IDEXX Enterolert® and Colilert-18® tests.

In addition to her day-to-day job, four years ago Carolann began running water microbiology workshops for fifth graders, after being approached by a local teacher interested in teaching her students about watersheds and water safety. Carolann brought the children on a full-day field trip which included an equestrian facility where they could observe how the rancher had reduced the bacterial contamination from horse manure in the creek. To understand the difference between clean and dirty water, students used Enterolert and Colilert tests to prepare their own samples collected downstream at the mouth of the creek. These workshops were so successful that Carolann was able to get grants to fund the project going forward.

More recently, Carolann worked with a fifth-grade class that wanted to make water science their science fair project. Three students compared the quality of water in three local creeks against their own toilet and faucet water at home. Their finding? The title of their project says it all: I Would Rather Swim in My Toilet than Pilarcitos Creek.

Since then, Carolann has created a nonprofit foundation, The Watershed Discovery Foundation, that specializes in educating third, fifth, and seventh graders about water microbiology and nonpoint source pollution.

Rotary Park on the banks of the Saco River in Biddeford, Maine, is the perfect spot for swimming, canoeing and fishing. But when local Girl Scouts visited on September 18, instead of bathing suits and beach towels, troop members brought sample jars and water testing kits from IDEXX. Their goal: assess the Saco’s water quality, as part of World Water Monitoring Day (WWMD).

Guided by troop leader Patsy Root, area scouts collected samples to test for turbidity, temperature, dissolved oxygen and pH. Not only did the girls get first-hand experience in the science of water testing—they confirmed for themselves that the Saco is a healthy, safe source of drinking water. Additionally, Chris Mansfield, from Biddeford/Saco Water Company, used incubated, safety–sealed Colilert® samples and a battery-operated UV lamp to explain how the water company tests for Total Coliforms and E. coli, demonstrating that it can also be the things you don’t see that can make water unsafe.

A Regulatory Affairs Specialist with IDEXX Water, Root and her scouts have participated in area WWMD for the past three years. The program raises awareness of the need to protect water resources by encouraging citizens to test their local bodies of water for toxins and bacteria. WWMD is supported by the U.S. EPA, Water Environment Federation, International Water Association and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Root’s troop has taken the message of WWMD to heart. Area Girl Scouts have become more cognizant of their role in protecting the source of their drinking water. And by posting their data to www.worldwatermonitoringday.org, they’ve seen how their water compares to other sources around the world. Think globally, act locally: for Patsy Root and her scouts, it’s not just a catch phrase, it’s a call to action.

Scott Comstock, a science teacher at King Middle School in Portland, Maine and seven other King teachers wanted their students to have a community-related science experience conducting authentic testing and providing valuable scientific data. So, he started the King Middle School River Works project, partnering with an array of organizations, including the Portland Water District, Portland Trails, Presumpscot River Watch, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and IDEXX Laboratories.

The King Middle School River Works project got Scott’s sixth graders out of the classroom and into the field, specifically, the Presumpscot River and Minnow Brook. Taking their canoes down the river, students stopped at Minnow Brook, set up camp and collected samples to bring back to their classroom lab. Working with IDEXX sampling and testing equipment including water vessels, Colilert® and Quanti-Tray® tests, UV lamps and the Quanti-Tray 2X Sealer, the sixth graders began to collect their E. coli sample data.

At the end of the expedition, the sixth graders from King Middle School presented their findings to a group of experts, including teachers, IDEXX technical representative Maureen Kane, and the Presumpscot River Watch.

Since Scott and his students embarked on their first expedition in the Spring of 2004, the program has continued and has been a huge success, both at raising his students’ awareness and in educating them about water safety.

New FDA Rules for Testing Bottled Water

Don’t forget: effective December 1, 2009, all water bottlers must meet the FDA’s new minimum requirements for source water. This source water testing is in addition to the current process and finished product testing currently performed by bottlers. Besides abiding by the FDA’s rules, bottlers may also be required to comply with Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, state, local and industry regulations and guidance.

Full details on the new guidelines are available here.

Highlights include:

Source water testing
• All source water must be tested (unless source is a public water system)
• Test is P/A for total coliform.
• Test is to be done weekly at each source.
• Bottlers may use different government- or agency-approved methods, as long as those methods give comparable results to methods used by the FDA (multiple tube fermentation and membranefiltration), however, an alternative method "must be capable of quantifying total coliform, if coliform is present."

Process testing
• Every three months, heterotrophic plate count and total coliform tests must be done on at least four containers and closures.
• Methods used must be recognized by the government agency or agencies having jurisdiction.

Finished product testing
• At least once per week analyze a representative sample for a batch or segment of a continuous production run for each type of bottled drinking water produced during the day’s production.
• Analyze samples by methods approved by the relevant government agency(ies) having jurisdiction.
• Bottlers can use different government- or agency-approved methods, as long as those methods give comparable results to methods used by the FDA.

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