Wastewater monitoring and testing has been emerging as an effective way to reveal public health trends. Wastewater surveillance programs in particular have been helping communities track the outbreak and spread of COVID-19. Still, ramping up such efforts is often difficult because they can require substantial funding and a variety of resources, as well as political support and expanded government services. Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Otakuye Conroy-Ben, an environmental engineer, is facing some of those obstacles in her work to recruit Native American tribal organizations to implement wastewater monitoring. While making some significant progress, Ben and her team are encountering administrative, cultural, geographic and economic obstacles to getting those projects up and running. The article was also published in The Mercury News,