Evaluation of Bacterial Contamination as an Indicator of Viral Contamination in a Sedimentary Aquifer in Uruguay

In Uruguay, groundwater is frequently used for agricultural activities, as well as for human consumption in urban and rural areas. As in many countries worldwide, drinking water microbiological quality is evaluated only according to bacteriological standards and virological analyses are not mentioned in the legislation. In this work, the incidence of human viral (Rotavirus A, Norovirus GII, and human Adenovirus) and bacterial (total and thermotolerant coliform and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) contamination in groundwater in the Salto district, Uruguay, as well as the possible correlation between these groups of microorganisms, was studied. From a total of 134 groundwater samples, 42 (32.1%) were positive for Rotavirus, only 1 (0.7%) for both Rotavirus and Adenovirus, and 96 (72.6%) samples were positive for bacterial indicators. Results also show that Rotavirus presence was not associated with changes in chemical composition of the aquifer water. Bacteriological indicators were not adequate to predict the presence of viruses in individual groundwater samples (well scale), but a deeper spatial-temporal analysis showed that they are promising candidates to assess the viral contamination degree at aquifer scale, since from the number of wells with bacterial contamination the number of wells with viral contamination could be estimated.