Question

A new recreational water monitoring program is to be established to facilitate swimming in the cooks River, Sydney. According to current accepted practices, recommend the following and including a brief justification for each of your recommendations a) Only one organism is to be monitored, what it should be ? b) Would you recommend monitoring by a” morphological” “physiological” or “molecular” based method? Why? c) Describe or name an example of a suitable method for this analysis?

Answer 1

a) In water monitoring program, if only one organism is to be monitored, then the coliform organisms can be used. The total coliform count indicates the quality of water. Faecal coliforms and faecal streptococcal count can also be used. Benthic macro invertebrate counts indicate the success of water monitoring programs.

b) I would recommend monitoring of water quality by molecular method which measures the amount of particular substance present in the given quantity of water.

c) The method that could be used for this analysis include total coliform count. The results are indicated as coliform microbial density and represents the extent of fecal contamination present in water.