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Wisconsin adopted a wastewater monitoring program specific to COVID early in the pandemic, trying to figure out how to recover a virus.
“We know how to filter wastewater and get all the bacteria out. That’s super simple, because they’re kind of big, they stick on filters. Viruses are tiny, they’re much more sparse, so we had to try a lot of methods,” said McLellan.
NEW Water, the brand of the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District, recognized the importance of this effort and started preserving samples while waiting for a method.
“We would freeze them and then once they were ready for them that they started testing,” said Sharon Thieszen, NEW Water field services manager.
NEW Water continues to send samples for testing every week. The results are entered into state and national databases for monitoring. It’s a tool that put wastewater management in a whole new role in public safety.
- From WBAY, October 2023
Learn more about NEW Water's response to COVID-19 >>