Abstract
Lake Shiwha, an artificial lake located near metropolitan Seoul, offers a unique water environment and has been suspected to have high levels of chemical and microbiological contaminations. Lake Shiwha was originally connected to the sea but currently has four major surface water inputs from agricultural, municipal, industrial areas and in addition an occasional inflow from the sea. The objectives of this study are to investigate the relative contribution of microbial contaminants from each of the inflowing surface waters and to identify appropriate microbial indicator organisms in this unique water environment. We measured the levels of microbial contaminations in the four inflowing surface waters. A number of microbial indicator organisms including total coliform (TC), fecal coliform (FC), E. coli, Enterococci, somatic and male-specific coliphages were analyzed. Bacterial indicator microorganisms were detected and quantified by the $Colilert^{(R)},\;Enterolert^{(R)}$ kit. Surface water (50 l) was sampled by $ViroCap^{TM}\;5"$ cartridge filters and analyzed by the single agar layer method for detecting coliphages. The concentrations of TC, FC, E. coli, and Enterococci were 1543 CFU/100 ml${\sim}1.99{\times}10^6$ CFU/100 ml, 0 CFU/100 ml${\sim}202$ CFU/100ml, 0 CFU/100 ml${\sim}1.80{\sim}10^5$ CFU/100ml, 74 CFU/100 ml${\sim}3408$ CFU/100 ml, respectively. The male-specific and somatic coliphages were detected in three different inflowing surface waters. Isolated E. coli and Enterococci strains were further analyzed by 16s rDNA amplification and subsequent phylogenetic analysis from Jungwang-chun, Ansan-chun, Banwol-chun and penstock of inflowing surface water. Our results indicated that the concentrations of different fecal indicator microorganisms might not be highly correlated with each other. Multiple microbial indicator organisms should be used for monitoring microbial contamination and microbial source tracking methods.
