wastewater

Wastewater testing helps track COVID trends. Currently, COVID levels in wastewater are surging in Kansas and Missouri as well as in much of the U.S.

The EPA could soon face a lawsuit for not protecting farmers from “forever chemicals.” Few states regulate PFAS in biosolids fertilizer, but farmers in the northeast are now calling for federal standards.

The legislation requiring companies to build their meatpacking sludge storage lagoons away from nearby homes passed the Missouri Senate this week.

Wastewater tests are designed to provide an early warning system so that public health officials can ward off outbreaks.

NexGen has proposed mining silica sand in Ste. Genevieve County on about 250 acres near Hawn State Park. But Missouri didn’t conduct any sort of review of the potential environmental or public health impacts of the mine before issuing a land reclamation permit last year.

Missouri scientists say that even though fewer people are getting tested for COVID, wastewater shows increasing evidence of new variants. Plus, Kansas City Manager Brian Platt talks about gun violence and how to stop events like the recent mass shooting in Westport.

The state and its partners at the University of Missouri are monitoring 112 sites to see if viral particles are increasing and if new COVID variants are emerging in the region's wastewater.

Iowa Department of Natural Resources documents show workers at a manure digester in northwest Iowa noted a drop in the digester’s tank but didn’t investigate the issue further. The digester leaked roughly 376,000 gallons of manure water into nearby creeks.

According to county data, COVID positivity is now 6.1%, compared to 2.2% a month ago, but officials caution that's likely an undercount, given that most testing is now being done at home and people may not be reporting their results.

The BA.2 subvariant is about 30% more transmissible than the original omicron variant and is fueling a surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Europe. However, it does not appear to cause any more severe illness than other forms of the coronavirus.

Documents show that by mid-March, Missouri’s public health agencies would transition to treat the virus as endemic, like it does the seasonal flu, without daily reporting of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Hospitals say they're facing a "double whammy" as patient burden increases while more staff are out due to illness. In some regions, patients have to wait days for a bed to become available.