With funding from the Reece Foundation we are investigating the sources of fecal pollution of the urban river Ouseburn, and implications for recreational water quality in public parkland. In collaboration with IIT Gandhinagar and UKIERI funding we investigated sustainable urban water systems like rainwater harvesting and wastewater reclamation in the UK and India.

Outcomes:
Read my opinion piece about five ways to know if a river is polluted with sewage.
Read about the impacts of combined sewer overflow discharges on the bacteriology of an urban river.
Read about our Lab in a Van for fecal pollution source tracking with onsite qPCR assays.
Read about performance gaps of sustainability features in green award winning university buildings with rainwater harvesting systems. The case study is based on the Devonshire Building and Urban Sciences Building of Newcastle University.
Read about our real word sustainability analysis of a decentralized water system in India with rainwater harvesting and zero wastewater discharge.

Our investigation of bacterial water quality in the Ouseburn has been reported in the national and local news: New Scientist, BBC Science Focus, Chronicle1, Chronicle2, ITV News Tyne and Tees and Metroradio.

Reece Foundation project: Cleaning up the Ouseburn