New methods of E. coli testing may provide more source information and be a lot faster in the near future. 

John Schumacher, Chief of Hydrologic Investigations at the U.S. Geological Survey spoke at Attorney General Chris Koster’s symposium on lake water quality last week.

In his presentation, which covered pollution sources and monitoring methods, Schumacher said keeping up with state of the art in this field is difficult.

"This is a field that is sort of like the computer field in the 1980’s," he said. "It is just virtually revolutionizing every three or four months it seems like."

Schumacher says current testing may not be able to keep up.

“The current methods that are recommended by the EPA or mandated, depending on what the use of the data is, [they] really prevent…or gives some great challenges because of some of the problems with those."

Some have questioned the depth of the local E. coli tests, some the areas where they test.  Many people still want to know whether the source is animal or human.  Schumacher says there are new developments that may help.

"There are some emerging, rapid, direct methods for E. coli detection. There are some rapid indirect methods for E. coli detection, more of the predictive tool, that has been used by a number of people around the country."

"And then finally there is this sort of general term called source tracking. Which can really get to be a spider web of a small network of roads, very difficult."

There was no consensus among presenters about the best way to keep up to date on E. coli testing methods.