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JUST TALKING SHIT
Thanks for your story about the water quality testing done at Honokowai Channel ("Change the Channel!" Nov. 15, 2007). However, I wasn't as moved as you were to brand the inconclusive results as "chilling" for several reasons.
1) Many potential pathogens for livestock as well as humans can be found in manure of both livestock and poultry. Ag land plus rain equals pathogens in the runoff.
2) The presence of fecal coliforms does not necessarily indicate the presence of feces. The EPA, being a typical federal bureaucracy is slow to update it's information resources so please Reference the following: ("Closing the Door on the Fecal Coliform Assay," Microbe, April 2006).
As indicators of fecal contamination, coliform assays are inadequate and unwarranted for several reasons. Coliform bacteria represent only about half of the genera in the family Enterobacteriaceae, and some of the overt pathogens in this family, e.g., salmonellae, are not coliforms. As is true for the entire family, some coliforms grow primarily on green plants and in other environmental niches.
I do believe that avoiding the beach after a steady rain is a smart choice. Aside from all of the potential human and animal feces point sources, runoff may also contain chemical fertilizer and pathogens like Listeria which occur naturally in the soil.
Darrel R. Smith, Kihei
November 29, 2007
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