Though managers of drinking waters and recreational swimming waters are required to routinely monitor water quality, surface water monitoring is increasingly up to local groups to support in terms of time and cost of analysis. Coordinated volunteer monthly monitoring in the main channel and tributaries of the Hudson River estuary from 2009-present has highlighted certain tributaries with consistently high levels of the fecal indicator bacteria, fecal enterococci. Of the tributaries to the Hudson River that show exceedances of acceptable enterococci levels, the Walkill/Rondout River complex is the largest, in both flow rate and especially in FIB loading levels to the Hudson watershed. However, the presence of FIB do not directly assess drinking or recreational contact risk, but are only “indicators” of pathogen risk. Additionally FIB do not provide insight into which type of warm blooded animals are causing excessive FIB levels – knowledge that is important for effective approaches to mitigate the pollution. In 2017, the regular monthly volunteer monitoring campaign for fecal enterococci for 24 sites along the Walkill/Rondout complex was augmented with 3 additional datasets: 1) additional FIB assays (E coli culturable levels) 2) examination of 4 different possible source of fecal contamination (avian, human, bovine and equine), and 3) quantification of genetic biomarkers of diverse (n =12)