The US EPA's research on microbial source tracking, with Sally Gutierrez, former Director of National Research Laboratory, EPA

[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange, 15-minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, educate, and inform other water sector leaders from across the globe. My name is Piers Clark and today my guest is Sally Gutierrez, a former director at the US EPA. Sally, wonderful to have you with us today.
[00:00:19] Sally Gutierrez: Thank you, Piers. And I thank you for this opportunity. But also, for your friendship and your mentorship through many years. It has been a real honor in many ways. We've known each other for quite a while now.
[00:00:34] Piers Clark: That is so kind of you to say. You've recently retired at the end of 2023 after having had a very long and illustrious career in one of the hardest and highest profile roles in the US water sector as director of the National Research Laboratory. And today, one of the key topics we're going to talk about is the work that you and your team did on the research and policy around microbial source tracking, i.e. how you trace where microbial pollution appears. But before we get to that, I want to have a little bit about your background. What did you study at university? What led you to become a regulator? Tell me that story.
[00:01:10] Sally Gutierrez: I'm a hydrologist. That's what my background is, that's what I studied, and that's what I have a graduate degree. I don't have a PhD, which is very unusual given I worked in the office of research. I came into the agency as a senior executive, so that is not one of the requirements because you're supervising and overseeing programs as opposed to actually doing research or other more technical work yourself. But at this point, I've been in the water business for more than 40 years, right? I've been in the water business working in the government; first in the state of Texas, right? And it's interesting because my career started in the state of Texas in their Department of Health. My career's been so long that the water program...
[00:02:02] Piers Clark: ...Predates the EPA!
[00:02:04] Sally Gutierrez: Exactly! So, I started my career at the Department of Health. I used to inspect water systems early on in my career. It was great. Climbing tanks, all that stuff. And it wasn't until later that the state of Texas formed their environmental agency. Then, I transitioned to the environmental agency. It was called the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. It's now called the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. But that's where I spent a good number of years, both in the health department and at the TNRCC. And I moved on to the Office of Research and Development. For about two and a half years, I actually went to Washington to oversee and lead the wastewater permitting program for the country. And a lot of people don't know this, but it's the largest permitting program in the world. So, we have almost a million permits. And, during that time, we really improved the numbers and got the numbers down some through the use of these more consolidated type permits. Overall, it was, it's been a fantastic career.
[00:03:16] Piers Clark: And I think most people will have heard of the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States. But they might not have heard of the National Research Laboratory. So, 30 seconds on the broader EPA and on the National Research Laboratory that you led?
[00:03:30] Sally Gutierrez: Yeah. Within the Office of Research and Development at US EPA, there were initially three national laboratories, and mine was the National Risk Management Research Laboratory. It was based in Cincinnati, Ohio, of all places, and a lot of people don't know that the work on research in Cincinnati related to water has been going on for now about 125 years. Nobody knows this, right? So, there's been research that's been going on here in Cincinnati around the topic of water for more than a century.
[00:04:11] Piers Clark: How many people are employed in the laboratory?
[00:04:14] Sally Gutierrez: In the building itself, a thousand people were there at one point in time. I think the numbers have diminished through time, but my role in the National Risk Management Laboratory was broader than water. When I was in there, and I did that for eight years, it was much broader, so it included air pollution, sustainability, water, wastewater, remediation of soil... So, it was much broader mission when I was doing that job.
[00:04:43] Piers Clark: The topic we want to delve into today is the pioneering work that you and your team did on research and policy around microbial source tracking. And I'd like you to start by telling me when did this work begin and why did it begin? What was it that made you and your team go, we need to research this area?
[00:05:00] Sally Gutierrez: When I came from the state of Texas, one of the responsibilities that the states have is to monitor all waters. These are surface water bodies, and the states have a responsibility to monitor where fecal pollution exists across the state. In the state of Texas, this information was available, but the actual, source of where that pollution was coming from... we didn't know. And the stakes are very high because if you say, " we have fecal pollution here." And this is the source, you mandate the development of a new wastewater treatment plant, only to find out you've misspent millions of dollars.
[00:05:43] Piers Clark: The fecal pollution was being measured by E. coli that people get very excited about because it's obviously an indicator of there being fecal pollution. But it doesn't determine whether it's come from a human source or whether it's come from an animal source. And so, you might see that a river is polluted, you then put in a whole bunch of infrastructure, but it's not solving the problems needed. And so, your work was to try and pin that down to work out both where it was coming from and whether it was from an anthropogenic, i. e. human source.
[00:06:11] Sally Gutierrez: Yes, exactly. When I got to the lab, the kind of capacity and the staff that we had, they were very traditional microbiology. Everything on plates, everything like that. At the time, they didn't have any capacity for doing more advanced type analytical work that would tell us what the source was. So, they were very traditional in what we had. We had great people, don't get me wrong. But they didn't have the capacity to do this next generation analytical methods. We had to start from scratch; we had to hire people with the appropriate skills and then acquire the instrumentation that we needed in order to be able to start down that road of trying to get us this information in a way that we didn't have before.
[00:07:10] Piers Clark: So, people would take spot samples and bring them back. Or was it instrumentation in the field?
[00:07:14] Sally Gutierrez: Instrumentation in the laboratories to track a genetic base.
[00:07:19] Piers Clark: That was the separating out whether it's from an anthropogenic or a animal source.
[00:07:23] Sally Gutierrez: Exactly. It must have taken eight years to hire the people, to get the instrumentation in place, get everything lined up, but the researchers did it. And then, of course, it had to be validated. So, they participated in studies to make sure that we could distinguish between these sources.
[00:07:43] Piers Clark: I wonder, once you'd started generating the data and were able to say, "oh, this pollution isn't from a human source, it's from a different source." Did you have trouble persuading the regulators and all the ancillary bodies that needed to be persuaded? How difficult was that?
[00:07:57] Sally Gutierrez: It's a process. And what kind of solidifies the accuracy and the credibility of these methods is to have them published as an EPA method. That's what kind of really gets the ball rolling with regard to the ability to really put it into policy. Before that, you really don't have a lot of standing if it's just standalone research. We were able to acquire the resources to do a multi-lab validation of the analytical methods, working very closely with our policy office in the office of water. After the multi-lab validation was the adoption and publishing of a validated EPA method for human fecal pollution.
[00:08:44] Piers Clark: And I'm glad we got to that point because ultimately, you need an organization with the integrity and the sort of standing of the EPA to lead the way. Organizations move slowly, they require leaders who are vigilant, and persuasive, and persistent like yourself. So, the influence you've made, Sally, it's just been incredible.
[00:09:06] Sally Gutierrez: I didn't do it alone. And I have to give a lot of credit to my colleagues who really did the hard work to get it done.
[00:09:13] Piers Clark: All the best work is done by a team! Now, Sally you mentioned you've had 40 or so years in the sector and that you stood down in December 2023, but you're still very active. You're still advising people. I met you a couple of weeks ago at the WEX conference in Valencia so I know that you're still traveling and stimulating the industry. I'd love to finish by asking you to go back 40 years and think about what advice would Sally give her younger self.
[00:09:41] Sally Gutierrez: Be even more relentless. Because the human cost of not addressing these serious water problems is so high. And I think that no person can do it alone. And so, to me, really taking advantage of the power of partnerships, and alliances, and relationships. Because these are complex issues at the end of the day and you need the right crowd. Choose the right crowd and really go after it.
[00:10:11] Piers Clark: I love that! Relentlessness and be part of the team. I'd like to add something extra if you don't mind. And it's based on my knowledge of you. I think it will have come across in this podcast, that you are such a relentlessly happy person, you bring energy into the room every time you speak at a conference, and it makes the people around you feel like we can achieve the impossible. And Sally, I rate myself as being incredibly lucky to have had my career touched by working with you over the last few years. So, thank you very much for taking the time to be with us today. You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with Piers Clark. Today, I've been talking to Sally Gutierrez, a former director at the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
I hope you enjoyed it. See you again next time.