Technical Abstract: Pathogen contamination is the second leading cause for placing surface waters on the 1998 303(d) list of impairments, second only to sediments. Contamination by pathogens accounts for 13% of all impairments, with a total of 5281 nationwide. Bacterial source tracking (BST) is an essential tool for addressing all aspects of Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). When applied to pathogen-impaired waters, it can be used to define water-quality problems in watersheds across the nation. These methods monitor the levels of fecal coliforms and bacteria that live in the gastrointestinal tract of animals and survive in the environment when expelled with feces. While some of these techniques are promising, most are still in the early stages of development. Many of these techniques have been tested in a limited number of watersheds and with a limited number of possible sources. Recently, the U.S EPA released a report that calls for a sustained nationwide study to test, compare, and improve bacterial source tracking methods. Bacterial source tracking (BST) is a term that was first coined by Hagedorn and Wiggins of Virginia Tech. It includes various sub-typing methods, such as antibiotic resistance analysis, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, ribotyping, restriction fragment length polymorphism, and amplified fragment length polymorphism, to differentiate between the sources of indicator bacteria in natural waters and their host origins. The issue in water-quality assessment depends upon knowledge of the source (human, dog, cattle, wild animals, etc) of contamination. Information from these methods can be used for accurate risk analysis, effective remediation, and valid total maximum daily load assessment.