Wastewater testing to assess the spread of the COVID-19 virus became common and widely publicized during the pandemic, but has focused primarily on urban areas.
The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) awarded $400,000 to Virginia Tech, with an additional $50,000 to Virginia Tech from the Virginia Department of Health, for a two-year project to identify and implement improved and new methods to detect pathogens for multiple diseases in agricultural wastewater communities.
“My work and research has focused primarily on rural areas, and prior to the pandemic, most of my research was on drinking water and health-related challenges,” said Alasdair Cohen, assistant professor of environmental epidemiology in the Department of Science Population Health. at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.
Cohen is the principal investigator on this new project that will build on research Cohen’s team has been conducting since 2022 in collaboration with a wastewater company in Southwest Virginia and led by Amanda Darling, Ph.D. student in Cohen’s group.
Dr. Cohen is doing important work on drinking water and health, locally and globally. During COVID, he jumped in to help develop improved methods for wastewater surveillance. This allowed the university and Virginia to better monitor and manage disease. With ARC funding, he and his community partners will bring this science to the benefit of rural communities.”
Laura Hungerford, Head of the Department of Population Health Sciences
Early in the pandemic, Virginia Tech researchers in the College of Engineering began testing campus wastewater for COVID-19. Cohen was part of that team and led the statistical analyzes of the data, finding that they were able to predict future cases of COVID-19 on a scale as small as a pet. The team published their findings in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Water, and this campus-wide research collaboration also piqued Cohen’s interest in the use of wastewater monitoring in rural areas.
The ARC grant involves two co-investigators from the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering: Amy Pruden, University Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Peter Vikesland, Nick Prillaman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Leigh-Anne Krometis, Associate Professor in biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Concurrent with the grant funding, Cohen’s team recently published “Making Waves: The Benefits and Challenges of Responsibly Implementing Wastewater-based Surveillance for Rural Communities” in the journal Water Research. The article draws attention to the potential public health benefits of wastewater surveillance for rural communities and the methodological and ethical challenges that Cohen and colleagues are working to address.
“ARC’s $400,000 grant will help Virginia Tech expand its work to identify pathogens in wastewater from rural communities,” U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith said in a news release announcing the grant. “This work aims to improve our nation’s public health through better community health monitoring and outbreak prediction.”
The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) monitors wastewater at sites throughout the Commonwealth for pathogens that cause COVID-19, influenza A, influenza B, hepatitis A, and respiratory syncytial virus. The department found, however, that results from some smaller rural communities are difficult to interpret.
“This project aims to complement VDH’s efforts in using wastewater-based surveillance to promote public health in rural towns in Appalachia Virginia,” said Rekha Singh, director of the department’s Wastewater Surveillance Program. “VDH has begun wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 in communities across the state beginning in September 2021. This new project will help identify best practices for sampling in small communities and help VDH implement effective surveillance of sewage in similar communities.”
Infrastructure is often part of the challenge for testing agricultural wastewater, Cohen said.
“You have fewer people but in a larger space, so you have more sewage collection infrastructure per person than you would have in an urban setting,” Cohen said. “A lot of rural towns, and especially older rural towns, will have sewage collection infrastructure with lots of cracks and breaks in the pipes. That means sewage could seep into the ground and it means water can get into the pipes.”
Especially after periods of heavier rainfall, runoff leaking into sewer systems could dilute the results of wastewater tests in rural areas. It can also mean tax dollars down the drain with sewage plants that treat stormwater along with sewage.
“We have enough preliminary data from our pilot study to show that this might be a problem,” Cohen said.
The grant will allow Cohen’s team to undertake wastewater surveillance in new communities in Southwest Virginia, gaining efficiency as lessons learned from previous studies are applied.
“The goal is to try to develop an approach so that rural utilities and public health agencies can determine if wastewater monitoring is something that makes sense for a given rural community,” Cohen said. “And if so, how could it be best implemented?”
