COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—After years of unexplained, random jumps in the levels of bacteria in Fountain Creek, federal officials believe they’ve found the likely culprit: pigeons.
Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey examined a 12-mile stretch of the creek and found high levels of E. Coli below Manitou Springs.
Researchers tested to see if the E. Coli came from livestock, deer, pets and human waste, which has been under suspicion for years following sewage spills in Colorado Springs and a leaky system in Manitou Springs.
USGS hydrologist David Mau said testing eliminated those possibilities leaving birds, particularly pigeons in Manitou Springs, as the likely source.
“It totally surprised us. We really expected to see something. If it wasn’t human, we expected it to be cows,” said Brian Vanden Heuvel, a Colorado State University-Pueblo biology professor who has been sampling Fountain Creek between Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
A public meeting on the results is scheduled in Colorado Springs on Wednesday.
Contamination of the creek has been a point of contention between Colorado Springs and Pueblo, about 40 miles downstream. The Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in 2005 over wastewater spills and a judge earlier this year fined Colorado Springs Utilities $35,500 to settle the lawsuit.
Despite the utility spending $120 million since 2004 on wastewater improvements and plans to spend another $300 million through 2018, high levels of bacteria kept showing up in the creek.
“It has to be coming from some other source, these high E. coli concentrations, and the only potential source after looking at the area was that birds may be the source,” Mau said.
There is no test yet to link E. coli with pigeon intestinal linings, but Mau said they’re developing one as part of their effort to conclude the investigation. A final report from the USGS is expected in November.
“We’ve been very confident, certainly with the amount of money we’ve invested in our wastewater system, that it wasn’t from our system,” Utilities spokesman Steve Berry said. “We’ve said all along it’s a large watershed and there are potentially multiple sources of E. coli that wind up in the waterway.”
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Information from: The Gazette,
