Reclamation Information Sharing Environment (RISE)

The present study analyzed the microbial communities of a constructed wetlands designed to treat reverse osmosis concentrate generated by an advanced water treatment facility. DNA sequencing and analysis of the V3-V4 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene was used to characterize the bacteria present in samples from soil, sand, and water substrates. Sampling was performed over period when operations moved from feeding entirely freshwater to the wetlands to increasing additions of reverse osmosis (RO) concentrate. All the substrates samples were found to have complex bacterial communities. Measurable changes in bacterial communities occurred during the study period, but large-scale changes in community structure were not observed. A small number of microbial taxa were identified as having undergone significant changes in their relative frequency of occurrence associated with changes in the RO concentrate fed to the wetlands.