For water utilities managing vast distribution networks, detecting pathogens is a crucial part of protecting public health. But a greater opportunity lies in understanding when and where conditions are becoming favourable before detection even occurs.
This shift from reactive monitoring towards predictive management is at the heart of a 20-year collaboration between CSIRO and Water Corporation focused on Naegleria fowleri, a free-living amoeba found naturally in warm freshwater and soil.
The research, led by CSIRO Senior Research Scientist Dr Geoffrey Puzon, has produced faster quantitative monitoring methods, identified biomarkers that can indicate favourable growth conditions and strengthened understanding of the wider microbial ecology supporting the pathogen. These insights are helping Water Corporation target interventions more effectively across Western Australia’s extensive drinking water networks.
The work earned CSIRO and Water Corporation the 2026 R&D Excellence Award, sponsored by Water Research Australia, at the 2026 Australian Water Awards in May. It was recognised for its outstanding scientific contribution and real-world impact, including its incorporation into national guidelines and international standards.
Water Corporation Manager, Operations Support, Water Quality Cameron Gordon said the collaboration began with a clear operational need.
“Naegleria is a ubiquitous pathogen that exists within the environment. It causes primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, which is a fatal disease that can afflict the public if the bug gets up your nose,” he said.
“The Water Corporation manages water supplies across the vast state of Western Australia. We’ve got a lot of above-ground mains and high temperatures in certain areas, and we believe the risk profile for Naegleria to exist within our networks is particularly high in some areas.
“We wanted to become less reactive to simple detection methods and become more knowledge-focused, with programmed research looking at the ecology of Naegleria, what makes conditions more favourable in certain schemes and what predisposing factors we need to look for.”
While warm water and low chlorine residuals are recognised risk factors, Dr Puzon said the pathogen cannot be fully understood in isolation from the microorganisms surrounding it.
“For N. fowleri, there really hasn’t been much detail or understanding of how the surrounding microbial ecology influences its presence,” he said.
“You can look for warm water and low chlorine residuals, but if you don’t understand the supporting food sources, you won’t know whether the risk is continuing to increase in those areas.”
This broader ecological approach allows researchers and utilities to investigate not only whether N. fowleri is present, but also whether the conditions it needs to establish and regrow are developing.
The need for this understanding is becoming more pressing as the climate changes, dr Puzon said, and the amoeba has been recorded globally, including in distribution systems with buried pipes.
“N. fowleri likes warmer temperatures, so there is a climate change-driven aspect as water and pipes remain warmer for longer,” he said.
For Water Corporation, climate change also creates a broader water security challenge, particularly in remote communities where alternative sources may be limited.
“We may not have the luxury of choice when it comes to different water supplies, particularly in some of our remote areas,” Gordon said.
“We’ve got to make every drop count, and we’ve got to make sure every drop we are using is as free of the pathogen as we can make it, or that we are at least aware of the risk so we can manage it within the network.”
One of the collaboration’s most immediate operational benefits has been a substantial reduction in testing time.
Water Corporation previously relied on an analytical method that could take between five and seven days to produce a result. Techniques developed through the research have reduced that turnaround to one or two days.
“It’s a significant reduction in the expected analytical turnaround time for a positive detection of Naegleria fowleri,” Gordon said.
More recently, the researchers have used digital polymerase chain reaction, or digital PCR, to move beyond a simple positive or negative result and estimate the concentration of amoeba cells in each litre of water.
Dr Puzon said the team developed a method to relate the number of DNA copies detected by the instrument to the number of cells present.
“Most of the time, the analytics tell us whether it is present or absent. But now we can relate that to total concentrations,” he said.
“We can see much more precisely how the concentration diminishes in the bulk water flowing through the system, then begins to increase in the biofilm, and how those total numbers are changing.”
The next phase will combine this quantitative monitoring with predictive biomarkers associated with the food sources that support N. fowleri.
“We want to understand how those biomarker concentrations are developing and whether we reach a threshold where conditions become very favourable for N. fowleri,” Dr Puzon said.
“From a management perspective, if we can keep those preferred food sources below that concentration, we minimise the ability of N. fowleri to regrow or colonise the site. We are effectively starving it.”
For a utility operating across an area as large and geographically diverse as Western Australia, better information enables limited operational resources to be directed where they can have the greatest impact.
Gordon said the research is helping Water Corporation refine how it assesses risk and targets established controls, including disinfection, tank cleaning and the proactive management of chlorine residuals.
“The greatest advantage of this research, particularly in regional communities, will be how we best target intervention techniques,” he said.
“In some ways, it’s more of the same in terms of how we manage the bug, but it’s more targeted towards specific areas or problem areas that may be experiencing lower chlorine or disinfection than they should, given the pathogen risk.”
Future biomarker thresholds could provide operational triggers before the pathogen itself is detected, allowing teams to intervene as conditions begin moving in the wrong direction.
“We may be able to direct operations to particular sites and be at the forefront of managing the risk before we have a Naegleria detection,” Gordon said.
“When we’re dealing with the great state of Western Australia, we’re not able to get out to every scheme every day. We’ve got to be selective about where we send our operations so we can respond to the risk as it is starting to develop.
“The knowledge lift we’ve gained through the research has enhanced our risk assessment processes. We want to move from reacting to detections in the bulk water towards asking what kinds of environments are favourable to these bugs and targeting those conditions.”
The collaboration’s influence now extends well beyond Water Corporation’s networks.
Dr Puzon’s expert review contributed research findings to national guidance for free-living organisms, including N. fowleri, through the National Health and Medical Research Council’s review of recreational water quality guidelines.
The analytical approaches developed through the work have also informed international standards. Following three deaths associated with N. fowleri in Louisiana in 2012, Dr Puzon was invited to work with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and joined the American Water Works Association Standard Methods Committee for Naegleria fowleri.
After two decades of collaboration, both partners believe there remains considerable potential to improve proactive pathogen control. The broader lesson, Dr Puzon said, is that pathogens do not exist independently from the ecosystems around them.
“What Cameron and I have done over all these years is not just chase one pathogen, but consider the bigger dynamic of the microbial ecology,” he said.
“By building that into the research, we’re finding avenues where we can limit the pathogen by targeting another part needed for its establishment, in this case its food source. By understanding the broader picture, we come away with more learning, and that can be directly applied to management.”
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