Galloway Creek, along a popular Greenway trail near Springfield, has tested high for levels of E.coli.
The Springfield-Greene County Health Department and the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks team up each summer to monitor rivers and creeks for the presence of coliform bacteria, or E. coli.
Swallowing water contaminated with E. coli can cause diarrhea.
According to the health department, the latest results from Galloway Creek at Highways 65 and 60 show the E. coli count at 281 Colony Forming Units, or CFUs, per 100 ml of water. That’s nearly 50 CFUs above the EPA’s limit for safe swimming or recreational activity.
Kathryn Wall is a spokesperson for the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, which records the results on its website.
“We post them every Thursday and we have this full landing page that has all of the summer information you could need. That is at www.health.springfieldmo.gov/summer. And in addition to the stream testing, it also has our pollen testing which is something we do during the warm months, and [the website] also has tips on heat related illnesses,” says Wall.
Other testing locations include James River, Lake Springfield, Little Sac River and Wilson’s Creek—those all tested in normal ranges for levels of E. coli.