The Effect of Precipitation on the Microbiological Quality of Bathing Water in Areas under Anthropogenic Impact

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I reviewed the previous version of the manuscript and I can see that most of my concerns were addressed during revision – thank you for that. However, I still think the discussion should be further improved. It is still largely the repetition of the results of this and other studies. I believe around two third of the text should be cut and shortened. For example, the text from line 270 to 303 can be summarised in two sentences. The following paragraph (line 304-314) should be incorporated in the next one, and rather than stating the previous findings, support the statements in lines 314-324. There is no need to go into such details on the findings of previous studies. The text in lines 325-326 is also the repetition of the results and can be deleted. The rest of the discussion should also be rewritten in the same manner.

I have a couple of minor comments as well:

Line 15: delete or (precipitation).

Line 106: in study area is not high -> in the study area is low

Lines 109 and 110: subject to -> affected by

Line 131: season -> seasons

Lines 170-171: ten -> ten events

Line 208: data recorded -> data were recorded

Lines 217 and 219: are -> were

Figure 3: seems like the red and green lines are mixed up as the green should be lower than the red.

Line 246: was P6 poor or excellent?

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Rev. round 1 (water-1473626). The title of the work is correct, but in my opinion, it is worth noting that the article concerns microbiological quality of water. Before getting the full text of the article, I thought there would be data on the chemical properties of the water, e.g. nitrogen and phosphorus content.

Rev. round 2 (water-1537765).

My remarks on the title of article and other suggestion.

 

The quality of the bathing waters can be interpreted differently. The title should be precise, leaving no doubt what the work is about. The authors based their studies on DIRECTIVE 2006/7/EC but there is no information about it either in the title, abstract or keywords. The interdisciplinary readers of the special issue of the Water volume – The Impact of Treated Urban Wastewaters and Flood Discharge on the Quality of the Bathing Water, may have completely different expectations regarding the content of the article than the intentions of the Authors.

 

For example in the paper: A. K. Simeonova, R. Z. Chuturkova, V. B. Bojilova. 2010. Bathing water quality monitoring of Varna Black Sea coastal zone, Bulgaria. Water Resources 37, 520–527.

There were analysed physicochemical parameters, pH, mineral oils, surface active substances, phenols, dissolved oxygen, nutrients – ammonium and phosphate’s.

Information about this is in the abstract.

 

The bath water quality can be viewed from a physicochemical or biological point of view. Directive clearly indicate intestinal enterococci and Escherichia coli as two groups of indicators bath water quality (according to the directive) but see Article 8, Cyanobacterial risks, point 1.

 

Readers might put the question why they are not references to Cyanobateria and the authors correlate data with pH, for example? There is no one mention to pH in the Directive.

 

These are obviously “academic discussions” that do not affect the quality of the work, which I have read with interest as not a microbiologist.

In my opinion, the work is correct in terms of methodology and content.

I do not know the details of the opinions of other reviewers and the grounds for formulating statements that “article has serious flaws, additional experiments needed, research not conducted correctly”.

How additional experiments? If I have to investigate the phytoplankton or bacteria content in the water of a lake, river, or a dam reservoir, what kind of experiment should I conduct?

If the other reviewers pointed out methodological deficiencies in details and rationally justify them, the Editors of the volume should decide whether to accept or reject the article. But if it was a casual statement, without details, I have mixed feelings about the reliability of the reviews. I am writing this as a biologist, non-microbiologist, environmental chemist, environmentalist.

Other comments

line 193: “between”; check please when between and when among

line 194: (p < 0.05) – spaces between p and <; see the line 186; the same tables 2 and 3

Table 1: why r_s between salinity and E. coli is not significant (underlined)?

line 214: (p > 0.05) - > or <

line 262: E. coli, Italic? E. coli

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

 

The effect of precipitation on the bathing water quality at the 2 area under anthropogenic impact 3 Marin Ordulj 1 , Slaven Jozić 2,*, Mateja Baranović 1 and Maja Krželj 1

Comments to authors

T

Authors did their best to improve the article and the revised submitted version seems to be better as the first one. In its actual form the manuscript needs more improvement to be at the level of the strong journal https://www.mdpi.com/journal/water. However the article may be accepted after also major revision since the studied area is rich in controlled and uncontrolled wastewater discharges that can negatively impact recreational water quality and pose a threat to human health and the environment.

Comments:

1. For 142 enumeration of E. coli, the modified method ISO 9308-1:2014 was used. Chromogenic Col- 143 iform Agar (CCA) was incubated for 4 hours at 36 ±2°C and then 20 hours at 44±0.5°C to 144 increase selectivity without negative impact on recovery: Please would use the same form of the number sometimes with space sometimes with not, follow over all the text.
2. The physicochemical analyses were neglected in the present work I preferred to see chemical oxygen demand, biological oxygen demand, Nitrate content and others possessing an anthropogenic impact that affect strongly the bacteria loads.
3. Data analysis

Authors Response Reviewer's comment: The results missed statistical analysis and in the paragraph Data analysis authors did not precise for each types of analysis what are the parameters analysed. Authors' reply: We do not understand the statement “The results missed statistical analysis” since the reviewer did not specify what he/she meant. Furthermore, we did not precise for each types of analysis what are the parameters analysed but we specified that before listing any result or results of the same type in Material and method section. It seemed inappropriate to define the statistical methods for each set of analyzes separately in the Data analysis section.

Authors did not bring attention for this point and I propose that authors see this form and to precise the parameters submitted to statistical analysis: as example The Student-Newman-Keuls analysis was used to determine the significant differences of removal efficiencies of TSS, PO₄^3-, NO₃^-, FC and FS in FWS and used to check the influence of the treatment units (HF-CW₃ and FWS) variation at P < 0.05.  Pearson correlations (P <0.05, P <0.01) between all studied parameters (T, pH, EC, DO, COD, BOD₅, TSS, PO₄^3-, NO₃^-, FC and FS were also performed via SPSS 20 software

4. coli must be cited in full only when cited at the first time after that you have to use only the abbreviated form even in Tables and figures. Same remark for combined sewer overflows (CSOs), also for CFU and please would verify for all the abbreviation.
5. Figure 2. Total precipitation in the bathing season in the period 2013-2021 I did not see the meaning to present the total precipitation during the all period 2013-2021 since the study was done only between 2020-2021. I see that it will be more specific to present precipitation only in the studied period and to use as scale month and not year if it will be possible.
6. Please instead of Intestinal enterococci use fecal enterococci
7. Please would replace “our” by “the present” like our study,

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Editor

The manuscript was improved and may be accepted after minor revision 

Line 128 : t 36±2°C please would insere space as follow: 36 ± 2°C please would correct for all the number in the text.

In table 1 and in Table 5 please would add “s” to parameter and also would add the unit of each parameter

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf