COVID-19 wastewater efforts confront long-term questions – Roll Call

“If I measure something here in D.C., how can I compare that to something being measured elsewhere?” said Jeseth Delgado Vela, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Architecture at Howard University. “Or is that comparison even important?”

Establishing a standardized, comprehensive system will take time. Otakuye Conroy-Ben, an assistant engineering professor at Arizona State University, spent the pandemic recruiting tribal organizations to implement wastewater monitoring. Her team is working with five tribes, and another three are pending. 

Infrastructure, geographic and relationship-building issues make the work slow-going. Conroy-Ben, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, has worked to get approval from one tribe for more than a year. 

“I was hoping to have a lot more tribes in on this project, but it’s just a lot of groundwork and a lot of administrative work to get a project like this going,” she said.

Potential upsides

For major cities, the benefits are clear. Houston has installed 177 sampling sites since May 2020 across wastewater treatment plants, lift stations and manholes, and is already using the system to track flu cases.