Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (5 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2018)

Urban water systems in the United States are poised for massive change. Water infrastructure built in the 20th century has promoted public health and has protected ecosystems from pollution. However, much of this infrastructure is now coming to the end of its design life, and requires substantial investments to keep it functional. Our water systems also face new challenges from shifting precipitation patterns, sea level rise, and contaminants of emerging concern, among others. Modernizing our nation’s aging water infrastructure is imperative – and to meet 21st century challenges, we must do better than simply repairing it.

The next generation of urban water infrastructure can also provide other societal benefits like resource recovery from sewage, increased wildlife habitat, and improved resilience to climate change effects in addition to water supply and wastewater treatment. Yet there still is little guidance for how water managers can include broader societal goals for multi-benefit infrastructure into what have historically been singular fields of engineered water supply and wastewater treatment. Without a better understanding of how public policy ties in to water infrastructure goals, improvements may only be made in moments of crisis, and the opportunity to create multi-benefit water systems will be lost.

This dissertation seeks to support decision-makers in designing and implementing more equitable, holistic, and environmentally-sound urban water infrastructure. Chapter I assesses historical precedents for recycling sewage into drinking water in California to contextualize current concerns and challenges. Water recycling has had a rich and varied history in California; currently, potable water reuse is on the rise. Chapter II develops a legitimacy framework for potable water reuse in California, which facilitates decision-making about technologies that fit into the unique social, political, and cultural contexts of a particular locale. Chapter III provides a popular science look at the practice of potable water reuse, which is unfamiliar to many people and has faced stark public opposition in some areas. Chapter IV focuses on stakeholder perspectives to identify goals and strategies for multi-benefit wastewater treatment, as well as analyzes barriers to achieving these goals. Chapter V employs a quantitative multi-criteria decision analysis paired with stakeholder analysis and scenario planning to evaluate potential nutrient management options for the San Francisco Bay Area in uncertain future conditions.

    Cover page: Decision Support for Multi-Benefit Urban Water Infrastructure
    • Article
    Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (2015)
      Cover page: Beyond User Acceptance: A Legitimacy Framework for Potable Water Reuse in California
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2023)
      During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater-based surveillance has been used alongside diagnostic testing to monitor infection rates. With the decline in cases reported to public health departments due to at-home testing, wastewater data may serve as the primary input for epidemiological models, but training these models is not straightforward. We explored factors affecting noise and bias in the ratio between wastewater and case data collected in 26 sewersheds in California from October 2020 to March 2022. The strength of the relationship between wastewater and case data appeared dependent on sampling frequency and population size, but was not increased by wastewater normalization to flow rate or case count normalization to testing rates. Additionally, the lead and lag times between wastewater and case data varied over time and space, and the ratio of log-transformed individual cases to wastewater concentrations changed over time. This ratio decreased between the Epsilon/Alpha and Delta variant surges of COVID-19 and increased during the Omicron BA.1 variant surge, and was also related to the diagnostic testing rate. Based on this analysis, we present a framework of scenarios describing the dynamics of the case to wastewater ratio to aid in data handling decisions for ongoing modeling efforts.
        Cover page: The dynamic relationship between COVID-19 cases and SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentrations across time and space: Considerations for model training data sets
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2021)
        Wastewater surveillance for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA can be integrated with COVID-19 case data to inform timely pandemic response. However, more research is needed to apply and develop systematic methods to interpret the true SARS-CoV-2 signal from noise introduced in wastewater samples (e.g., from sewer conditions, sampling and extraction methods, etc.). In this study, raw wastewater was collected weekly from five sewersheds and one residential facility. The concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater samples were compared to geocoded COVID-19 clinical testing data. SARS-CoV-2 was reliably detected (95% positivity) in frozen wastewater samples when reported daily new COVID-19 cases were 2.4 or more per 100,000 people. To adjust for variation in sample fecal content, four normalization biomarkers were evaluated: crAssphage, pepper mild mottle virus, Bacteroides ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and human 18S rRNA. Of these, crAssphage displayed the least spatial and temporal variability. Both unnormalized SARS-CoV-2 RNA signal and signal normalized to crAssphage had positive and significant correlation with clinical testing data (Kendall's Tau-b (τ)=0.43 and 0.38, respectively), but no normalization biomarker strengthened the correlation with clinical testing data. Locational dependencies and the date associated with testing data impacted the lead time of wastewater for clinical trends, and no lead time was observed when the sample collection date (versus the result date) was used for both wastewater and clinical testing data. This study supports that trends in wastewater surveillance data reflect trends in COVID-19 disease occurrence and presents tools that could be applied to make wastewater signal more interpretable and comparable across studies.
          Cover page: Tools for interpretation of wastewater SARS-CoV-2 temporal and spatial trends demonstrated with data collected in the San Francisco Bay Area
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Davis Previously Published Works (2021)
          Wastewater surveillance for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an emerging approach to help identify the risk of a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. This tool can contribute to public health surveillance at both community (wastewater treatment system) and institutional (e.g., colleges, prisons, and nursing homes) scales. This paper explores the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from initial wastewater surveillance efforts at colleges and university systems to inform future research, development and implementation. We present the experiences of 25 college and university systems in the United States that monitored campus wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 during the fall 2020 academic period. We describe the broad range of approaches, findings, resources, and impacts from these initial efforts. These institutions range in size, social and political geographies, and include both public and private institutions. Our analysis suggests that wastewater monitoring at colleges requires consideration of local information needs, sewage infrastructure, resources for sampling and analysis, college and community dynamics, approaches to interpretation and communication of results, and follow-up actions. Most colleges reported that a learning process of experimentation, evaluation, and adaptation was key to progress. This process requires ongoing collaboration among diverse stakeholders including decision-makers, researchers, faculty, facilities staff, students, and community members.
            Cover page: Wastewater Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 on College Campuses: Initial Efforts, Lessons Learned, and Research Needs
            Top