UES INC — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.4

Description

Water is a critical national resource, and its protection and remediation is USDA National Challenge Area #6: Water. Specifically, National Challenge Area #6 is focused on monitoring surface water run-off for biotic and abiotic contaminants and the sources of these pollutants. Microbial contamination of surface water resources is common in the United States and has been implicated in waterborne disease outbreaks. Reduction of nutrients and pathogens present in run-off waters and the subsequent eutrophic effects from these contaminants leaching into our nation's waters could be enabled through faster monitoring methods. Such rapid methods would lead to faster mitigation of such pollutants and could inform smarter application of fertilizers, thereby reducing costs to farmers. To date, water quality monitoring is heavily reliant on manual sample collection and subsequent time-consuming, laboratory-based testing. Agricultural run-off following rain events can include livestock waste that harbors microbial pathogens, such as E. coli, and fertilizers, which may flow into lakes and rivers that serve as drinking water sources and lead to their contamination. Nutrient loads in run-off waters combined with extreme weather events further contribute to the contamination of these water sources, which may lead to blooms of algae and possibly subsequent harmful toxin exposures.Currently, microbial culture methods or quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) are used to monitor stormwater run-off for bacterial loads. Nutrient levels are monitored routinely for water quality assessment to predict a harmful algal bloom. However, a field deployable, real-time sensor with combined biotic and abiotic contaminant detection has not yet been developed. Delayed detection of contamination increases public health risk and adverse economic impacts as drinking water utilities must increase spending on chemicals to treat contaminated waters. Therefore, a need exists for fast and accurate in situ monitoring of surface water quality, specifically for biotic and abiotic contaminants. Here, UES, Inc. proposes to develop an integrated multiplexed sensing system to simultaneously monitor biotic and abiotic water contaminants in near real-time in a field setting (in situ). The ultimate goal will be to integrate biotic and abiotic sensing capabilities in one sensor system to pinpoint sources of nutrient and bacterial contamination in agricultural settings. This capability will provide a more efficient and cost-effective way to identify sources of nutrient and microbial contamination.