Fluorescence spectroscopy has shown promise as a sensitive and rapid water quality monitoring tool. Strong links between increased presence of aromatic amino acids and microbial activity have been made, leading to the hypothesis that water impacted with biologically treated wastewater effluent would produce a distinctive fluorescence signature. The primary objectives of this study were to demonstrate whether fluorescence spectroscopy can be used to identify wastewater impact events and to establish detection limits for future use as an on-line monitoring tool. Samples were prepared by adding known amounts of secondary wastewater effluent to source water from Lake Ontario, which resulted in pronounced tryptophan and tyrosine peaks. With results obtained using several spectral dimensionality reduction techniques, application of advanced classification methods demonstrated the ability to detect and correctly classify wastewater concentrations in the sample. Using these methods the presence of < 1% wastewater in source water (by volume) was detectable with a high degree of accuracy.
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