Paul Berg, a water systems engineer with CH2M, was involved in a volunteer project that consisted of providing an assessment and upgrading operations of a small water system serving a boarding school in Kijabe, Kenya. The owners and operators of the system specifically wanted to test for E. coli bacteria in drinking water to determine the safety of the water and to understand if the testing procedure was a viable approach for routine monitoring. The school is located about two hours from Nairobi, making lab testing inconvenient and expensive. Furthermore, it was desirable to obtain rapid results during the project trip to help inform the on-site work.
The volunteer group used the Aquagenx Compartment Bag Test (CBT) for this project because it is designed for on-site testing without the need for labs and resources such as electricity and other equipment.