Enterococci levels in the Bronx River during dry and wet weather conditions

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1 Department of Earth System Science and Environmental Engineering, Grove School of Engineering, City College of the City University of New York, New York, New York, USA
2 Department of Civil Engineering, Grove School of Engineering, City College of the City University of New York, New York, New York, USA
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.750v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Environmental Sciences
Keywords
Bronx River, fecal indicator bacteria, combined sewer overflow, cso, enterococci
Copyright
© 2014 Enecio et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Enecio ML, Krakauer NY. 2014. Enterococci levels in the Bronx River during dry and wet weather conditions. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e750v1

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to understand fecal microorganism contamination in the Bronx River within New York City and how it is affected by combined sewer overflow (CSO) events. Nine sites along the Bronx River were sampled throughout the summer of 2014 during wet and dry weather conditions. The samples were analyzed for enterococcus fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) concentration. The data revealed that wet weather enterococci concentrations are as 3 to 28 times greater than dry weather concentrations. The highest enterococci concentrations were found where the river enters Bronx County from Westchester County and near a storm water outfall. The positive correlation shown between the amount of rainfall and the FIB concentrations verifies that CSO and storm water discharges are a major source of FIB contamination in the river.

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