Workshop Report: Developing Pollution Source Tracking for Recreational and Shellfish Waters

The Environment Agency of England and Wales obtained European Community Initiative INTERREG IIIB funding for a project called ICReW—Improving Coastal and Recreational Waters. The project consists of seven pilot actions aiming to contribute to the reduction of pollution, to enhance water quality, and to ensure that land-use practices and recreational activities can exist side by side without impacting public health. One of these actions is to identify and develop a common methodology for source-tracking fecal pollution, for regulatory purposes, over a wide geographical area in Europe. In order to do this the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK, sponsored the first international workshop on the subject. Key researchers from around the world were invited to attend to recommend the most appropriate method(s) for development and field trial in Europe. The meeting concluded that for the specific requirements of the ICReW project two methods should be developed and trialled: bacteroides genotyping and F+RNA coliphage genotyping. This article summarizes the reasons why these methods were chosen as the most appropriate for the circumstances of this particular project. The inherent challenges of establishing a pilot program to test the methods are outlined and recommendations were provided for the trial.