Commercial Pooper Scooper Service
Dog Waste Poses Threat To Water
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2002-06-07-dog-usat.htm
June 6th, 2002

“For as long as the dog has been man's best friend, dog waste has posed a menace to man's nose
and foot. Now science has revealed a more unsavory truth: It's an environmental pollutant.
In the mid-1990s, scientists perfected methods for tracking the origin of nasty bacteria in streams
and seawater. From Clearwater, Fla., to Arlington, Va., to Boise the trail has led straight to the
hunched-up dog - and to owners who don't pick up after their pets.
At some beaches, dogs help raise bacteria levels so high that visitors must stay out of the water.
Goaded by such studies, some cities have directed as much as $10,000 in the last few years to
encourage dog owners to clean up after their pets. A few municipalities have started issuing
citations to those who ignore pet clean-up ordinances.
Many dog lovers are in denial about their pooches' leavings. But researchers have named the idea
that areas used by dogs pump more bacteria into waterways - the "Fido hypothesis."
Dogs are only one of many fixtures of suburban America that add to water pollution. lawn
fertilizers, rinse water from driveways and motor oil commonly end up in streams and lakes.
But unlike those sources, dogs generate disease-causing bacteria that can make people sick.
Studies done in the last few years put dogs third or fourth on the list of contributors to bacteria in
contaminated waters. "Dogs are one of our usual suspects," says Valerie Harwood, a
microbiologist at the University of South Florida. "At certain sites, we find their effect to be
significant."
It doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure out that dog do is nasty. But it took science to determine how nasty
it is.
From mutt to blue-blooded champion, all dogs harbor so-called coliform bacteria, which live in the
gut. The group includes E. Coli, a bacterium that can cause disease, and fecal coliform bacteria,
which spread through feces. Dogs also carry salmonella and giardia. Environmental officials use
measurements of some of these bacteria as barometers of how much fecal matter has
contaminated a body of water.
This wouldn't matter if pet dogs were as rare as pet chinchillas. But four in 10 U.S. households
include at least one dog, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. The
association's statistics also show that Americans owned 54.6 million dogs in 1996 and 68 million
dogs in 2000. Of that total, 45% were "large" dogs - 40 pounds or more.
Those numbers add up to a lot of kibble. That wouldn't matter if all dog owners also owned a
pooper-scooper. But several studies have found that roughly 40% of Americans don't pick up their
dogs' feces (women are more likely to do so than men).”

New analysis provides answers
“The environmental impact of dog waste went unrecognized for decades. Then scientists
developed lab techniques to determine the origin of fecal bacteria contaminating water. One
method is a variant of DNA fingerprinting. Another method looks at the antibiotic resistance of
microbes from different species.
Scientists caution that the methods are still new. They are able to distinguish between major and
minor sources of pollution, but they can't say with precision whether dogs contribute 20% or 30%
of the pollution in a stream. "There's inherently some error," says Don Stoeckel, a microbiologist
for the Ohio district of the U.S. Geological Survey who's studying bacteria-tracking methods. "I
think the best (they) can do is give you some evidence of the magnitude of each source."
Nonetheless, Stoeckel says, the analytical tools do provide useful information. Researchers have
studied dozens of waterways. Wild birds and humans usually head the roster of who's fouling the
water. But in some areas, dogs make significant deposits.
At Morro Bay, Calif., for example, dogs contribute roughly 10% of the E. coli, says Christopher
Kitts, a microbiologist at California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo. "And that can be
the difference between a beach closing and a beach not closing," he says.

Places where dogs dirty the water:
Stevenson Creek in Clearwater, Fla. Residents were worried that a sewage treatment plant
contaminated the creek. But when Harwood tested the water, she found that dogs, along with
leaky septic tanks and wild animals, were to blame for high bacteria counts. Dog feces probably
washed out of yards by the creek, Harwood says.
Four Mile Run in Arlington and Fairfax counties, Va. Studies show that dogs add to the
contamination in this suburban Washington, D.C. stream. Officials calculate that the 12,000 dogs
living in Four Mile Run's watershed leave more than 5,000 pounds of "solid waste" every day.
Boise River in Boise. The river suffers from high bacteria levels that make it unsuitable for
swimming. Testing of streams and drainpipes flowing into the river showed that in urban areas,
dogs were a leading culprit. In some spots, dogs and cats account for even more of the bacteria
than human feces - from dysfunctional septic tanks and leaky sewage pipes - do.

Fines don't sway some
“Even where dogs aren't the prime offenders, they're one of the few polluters authorities have
control over. At many California beaches, for example, seagulls and other birds are most
responsible for high bacteria levels. But federal laws protect birds.
That leaves dogs. Officials know that they have a lot of educating to do before people realize their
pooch can be a canine sewage pipe. Some people find it humiliating to carry a plastic bag.
A survey by the Center for Watershed Protection in 1999 found that of the 41% of respondents who
rarely or never clean up after their dogs, 44% would refuse to do so in the face of fines and
neighbors' complaints. Reasons included, "because it eventually goes away," "small dog, small
waste," and "just because."
So more cities may follow the lead of Laguna Beach, Calif., a wealthy beach enclave. The city
provides pooper-scoopers at the local dog park. But many people "don't take care of their little
friends," says Victor Hillstead, the city's parks and buildings manager.
So the city hired Entre-Manure, poop-scooping service based in nearby Dana Point whose motto is
"#1 in the #2 Business." Since the city's contract started in January, the service has collected 187
pounds of dog waste from the city. "I'm real proud of that fact," says Craig Stern, founder and
chief picker-upper. "That's pollution that'll never reach the ocean." Learn about Craig Stern at:
Entre-manure.com

Cities struggle with 'dog piles'. Where they're cracking
down:

San Diego. The city spent roughly $10,000 on extra trash cans, nagging signs and plastic "mutt
mitts" at its Dog Beach, where the surf was closed to swimmers 125 times in 2000. The measures
led to "measurably fewer dog piles. That's the term we use," says Ted Medina, deputy director for
coastal parks. He estimates the beach is 30%-40% cleaner than it was before the effort started late
last year.

Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area near Atlanta. Bacteria levels in the river exceed
standards so often that a Web site tells would-be boaters and swimmers whether the river is safe
on any given day. To help clean it up, park officials recently started giving tickets to visitors who
have dogs but no doggie bags.

Boulder, Colo. Here the problem wasn't dirty water but the nitrogen in dog droppings. Native
grasses in the city's mountain parks are used to low-nitrogen conditions. But with dogs doing their
business, weeds were muscling aside the grasses. The city did 10 months of education before
starting to hand out $100 fines last year. Boulder officials had to convince residents that dog waste
"is not fertilizer," says Mike Patton, co-director of open space and mountain parks. "Some people
really did believe it was."
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