Research underway to test urban water quality

Water industry executive Henry H Wheeler has issued $1.25m to the Bren School of Environment Science and Management, Santa Barbara, for researcher Patricia Holden’s new ‘Urban Water Environment’ initiative.

The endeavour aims to identify and quantify threats to surface waters and groundwater in urban environments, along with finding solutions to curb them.

Chancellor Henry T Yang said that Wheeler’s strategic and visionary philanthropy will make a difference in addressing local and global water quality issues.

Wheeler approached Patricia Holden following her earlier research that employed DNA and dye tracer techniques to reveal the presence of human waste in creeks and storm drains, indicating underground sewer leakages.

"We need to know if water is a factor in disease or not, and if it is, we need to remediate it," Wheeler said.

Santa Barbara will serve as a lab for Patricia Holden’s project for sampling, coring, and analysis to illuminate issues plaguing cities around the world, when it begins late this year.

Patricia Holden’s work will hold potential implications for public and environmental health on a broader scale if resulting insights and possible remedies can inform or replicate in other locations.

The research aims to find solutions as to how one can protect the entire urban water environment from an array of potential pollutants such as pathogens, pharmaceuticals, ingredients from shampoos to the hormones we take and excrete, pills dumped down the drain and industrial solvents and gasoline.

Patricia Holden also aims to learn about the rate and extent of natural attenuation processes to discover passive, or minimally engineered, solutions.