The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently awarded $75,000 to a team of Fort Lewis College students for a water bacteria detection research project.

As part of EPA’s People, Prosperity and the Planet Program, the P3 award will provide funding for the students to develop and validate a scientific system to rapidly detect specific waterborne bacteria from environmental water samples, known as an open-source Droplet Digital Polymerase Chain Reaction.

The students will test water samples from the Animas River and communicate the importance of water resource protection to communities in the Four Corners area.

“Access to clean water is critical for protecting human health and the environment,” said KC Becker, EPA Regional Administrator. “Congratulations to these Fort Lewis College students, whose ground-breaking project develops innovative solutions to some of the most difficult water-quality challenges facing our region.”

This award is part of nearly $1.2 million in funding granted to 16 college student teams across the nation. The two-year project funding promotes hands-on experience, enabling students to turn their creative design and engineering ideas into reality, while helping solve real-world environmental challenges.

Students will propose innovative and sustainable ideas and concepts and carry them through the research, design and demonstration stages. During the second year of the award, student teams will showcase their designs at EPA’s National Student Design Expo.

For more information, contact EPA representative Valerie Doornbos at doornbos.valerie@epa.gov or Fort Lewis representative Nardy Bickel at nbickel@fortlewis.edu.