Kadonsky, Krystin

Krystin Kadonsky, E.I. is a PhD student in the Environmental Systems graduate group at the University of California Merced. She joined Dr. Colleen...

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About Kadonsky, Krystin

Krystin Kadonsky, E.I. is a PhD student in the Environmental Systems graduate group at the University of California Merced. She joined Dr. Colleen Naughton's Food-Energy-Water Systems for and with the UnderServed (FEWS-US) research group in the summer of 2021 to aid the Healthy Central Valley Together (HCVT), COVIDPoops19 dashboard of wastewater monitoring locations, and Wastewater SARS Public Health Environmental Response (W-SPHERE) global data center projects. Her background is in Civil and Environmental engineering with four years of water and wastewater sector experience.

Kadonsky, Krystin

Titles from this speaker

Description: Healthy Central Valley Together: An Environmental Justice Approach for Wastewater...

Healthy Central Valley Together: An Environmental Justice Approach for Wastewater Disease Surveillance and Health Equity in California

Abstract

Amid the 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19), the scientific community has a responsibility to provide accessible public health resources within their communities. Wastewater disease surveillance (WDS) has been used to monitor community spread of the pandemic and can often provide an early warning system for outbreaks. Similar to the access to COVID-19 clinical testing and vaccinations, there is a disparity in access to wastewater testing in rural and underserved communities. The Central Valley of California has some of the highest poverty, COVID-19 case rates per population, and food insecurity in the nation as well as lower vaccination rates and access to health care. This study conducted a review of wastewater testing in California to target sampling in an additional eight treatment plants in the Central Valley for greater health equity. Methods for the review of SARS-CoV-2 wastewater testing in California included analysis of peer-reviewed literature, government-provided data, and news stories filtered from the COVIDPoops19 global dashboard of wastewater monitoring sites. California has a classification approach for Disadvantaged Communities that aggregates multiple environmental justice layers (exposure to environmental pollution, poverty, education, sensitive populations, linguistic isolation, etc.). There are twelve universities, nine public dashboards, and 48 of 384 wastewater treatment plants monitoring wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 within California. The majority of wastewater monitoring in California has been conducted in the urban areas of Coastal and Southern California (34/48), with a lack of monitoring in more rural areas of Central (10/48) and Northern California (4/48). Out of the 48 WWTPs monitoring throughout California, 10 of them are located within disadvantaged communities (21%). This research demonstrates the need for an environmental justice approach when determining locations for WDS. Seeing the need for greater equity in wastewater monitoring, eight wastewater treatment plants in Yolo, Merced, and Stanislaus Counties were onboarded as part of the Healthy Central Valley Together (HCVT) program. HCTV is an expansion of the Healthy Davis Together (HDT) initiative in Davis, CA. The California Department of Public Health and county health departments were consulted in site identification based on their greatest needs. Consideration of existing wastewater facility operations was also important in establishing sampling campaigns. Two of the facilities operate lagoon-based treatment systems, and were not equipped with autosamplers for sample collection (autosamplers were provided). In designing our sampling campaign for these facilities, the input of city staff was invaluable for determining placement of autosamplers and how operations would proceed to collect representative samples. Three sample processing methods were evaluated for the program: 1) manual ultrafiltration, 2) automated magnetic bead-based concentration and extraction, and 3) primary sludge or settled solids analysis. The methods presented tradeoffs in terms of sensitivity, ease of implementation, and ability for scale-up. Our initial workflow for the sample processing method included ultrafiltration (UF)-based concentration followed by manual RNA extraction with a column-based kit. While the UF method delivered satisfactory results for diverse sample matrices, the UF-based workflow was impossible to sustain as our sampling campaign scaled up. An automated, particle-based concentration and extraction workflow that coupled a KingFisher Flex robot with Nanotrap® particles and the MagMAX kit was a much faster and easier approach that performed consistently across heterogeneous wastewater samples. By switching to this method, we were able to significantly cut turnaround time (from sample delivery to qPCR completion) from two days to only several hours, and scale up our sampling frequency. Analysis of primary sludge was also compared against the automated, particle-based workflow, with the goal of increasing sensitivity in the analysis. For the four facilities that operate primary clarifies, primary sludge collection was rapid and provided sensitive results. However, half of the wastewater treatment plants in the program do not operate primary clarifiers and samples from these facilities required an additional solids settling step that increased processing time and labor costs. In rural areas where facility staff is limited, the additional settling step is time-prohibitive if analytical processes were not included. We recommend that a suite of sample processing methods are standardized and take into account existing facility operations in small-scale, rural systems. Our partnership between HDT/HCVT, wastewater facilities, public health departments, and city managers illustrates the many real-world actions that can be implemented in response to wastewater data. At the community scale, HDT works with local government to issue press releases informing residents about the evolution of its WDS program, and about significant changes in wastewater data trends. HDT has also turned to social-media posts and an explainer video to help residents understand how wastewater data can be used to inform pandemic response. HDT's online wastewater-surveillance dashboard is designed as an additional education and outreach tool. The dashboard contains infographics explaining how to interpret wastewater data, allows users to explore data collected at different locations, allows users to zoom in on recently collected data, and provides a plain-language summary of how wastewater trends in a particular zone compare to trends in the city overall. With the review and selection of eight additional treatment facilities in undeserved areas, HCVT is an example of a WDS environmental justice approach for greater health equity nationally and globally.

The following conference paper was presented at the Public Health and Water Conference & Wastewater Disease Surveillance Summit in Cincinnati, OH, March 21-24, 2022.

SpeakerKadonsky, Krystin

Presentation time

10:15:00

10:45:00

Session time

10:15:00

11:15:00

SessionWastewater, Health and Environmental Justice across the US

Session number16

Session locationDuke Energy Convention Center, Cincinnati, Ohio

TopicDiversity and Inclusion, GIS, PPCPs, Source Tracking

Author(s)

Kadonsky, Krystin

Author(s)K. Kadonsky1; C. Naughton2; L. Tucker3; C. Medina4; R. Olson5; J. Reyes6; C. Bess7; L. Rueda8; A. Boehm9; K. Wigginton10; M. Wolfe11; H. Bischel12

SourceProceedings of the Water Environment Federation

Document typeConference Paper

PublisherWater Environment Federation

Print publication date Mar 2022

DOI10.2175/193864718825158310

Volume / Issue

Content sourcePublic Health and Water Conference

Word count18

Base text size -

Kadonsky, Krystin

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