Municipal water from Sugar Land, Texas, is being testing for Cryptosporidium (crypto) by the Hygienic Laboratory as part of a contract that ends October 2017.

Brazos River in Palo Pinto County, Texas (photo credit: HuecoBear)

Although not life-threatening to healthy adults, crypto and giardia can be fatal to infants, the elderly, pregnant women and people with a compromised immune system. Symptoms may include frequent watery diarrhea, vomiting and fever, among other flu-like symptoms; asymptomatic (no symptoms) cases may also occur.

Crypto is the leading cause of waterborne diseases in the United States. A microscopic parasite that can cause the diarrheal disease cryptosporidiosis, it is most commonly spread through surface water, including rivers and lakes.

Sugar Land, population 87,367, is located 20 miles southwest of downtown Houston. The city’s water system draws groundwater from 16 wells and mixes it with surface water from the Brazos River.

Municipalities that use surface water entirely or as part of their water source may be susceptible to crypto and other enteric waterborne diseases, and are required to perform tests for these contaminants. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recently assessed Sugar Land’s source water and, though they found no contaminants, recommended testing.

Sugar Land’s Surface Water Treatment Plant uses membrane filtration and post-filtration disinfection to remove waterborne organisms from surface water drawn from the Brazos River. The filter membranes remove microbes, including Cryptosporidium, that may be present in the surface water.

When asked how a city in south Texas learned about the Hygienic Laboratory’s expertise in this testing, Nancy Hall, environmental microbiologist, said that Sugar Land might have found the lab on the EPA list of labs certified to test for crypto. “But,” she said, “they might have heard about us from others. We test for a number of Texas cities.”