Wichita ? A two-year study produced one result that city officials had expected and one they hadn’t. Wichita is indeed responsible for pollution in the Arkansas River, but so are towns upstream from Kansas’ largest city — and that makes the problem even more complex.

“We as a community were quick to blame ourselves,” said Jack Brown, Wichita’s director of environmental health. “We have a contribution, but it is really a basinwide issue.”

As the city gets ready for the annual Wichita River Festival, it will resume its daily testing of the Arkansas River both before and during the event.

The results are expected to be the same as last year. The river is usually safe for recreation as long as it doesn’t rain. But after a heavy rain, bacteria in the river exceed levels considered safe for most activities.

To date, the city has been able to identify a handful of suspected sources of contamination in the Arkansas River with the help of a $2.3 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

But experts cautioned it would be wrong to think that those were the only pollution sources.

Some tests show that the pollution is coming from everywhere: It runs off of farm fields and feedlots as well as parking lots and city streets.

To pinpoint the diverse sources of pollution, George Marchin, a microbiologist with Kansas State University, plans to analyze 7,000 river samples this summer to determine whether the bacteria and sewage in the water were coming largely from geese, people, cows or dogs.

Bacteria samples are tested to see how resistant they are to different types of antibiotics and are matched against a database of 1,300 known sources.

Based on the studies done so far, Marchin believes the bacteria are coming from just about everything.

“There is not one outstanding source,” he said. “It appears to be a mixture.”

The river picks up bacteria as it flows through Wichita, but fecal coliform bacteria also are coming from upstream, particularly on the Little Arkansas River.

In 1997, near the towns of Halstead and Sedgwick, the U.S. Geological Survey found 3 million to 4 million colonies of bacteria per liter of water, up to 20,000 times the amount allowed for recreation.

Bacteria entering the river 80 to 90 miles upstream from Wichita could make the river unsafe for recreation in the center of the city, Brown said.

After the city of Wichita rebuilt its sewage treatment plant in the late 1980s, the state noticed some quick improvements in water quality. The Arkansas River was considered safe for boating and swimming.

By the late 1990s, state samples showed that bacterial levels south of Wichita were again too high. The KDHE put the Arkansas back on the dirty river list that it is required to submit every two years to the federal government.

That listing, along with the cancellation of a River Festival event on the water and the filing of a lawsuit by environmental groups to force the state to clean up its rivers, led to the city’s efforts.

For now, the city is concentrating on problems at home.

The most visible efforts will take place during the River Festival, the state’s largest party centered on a natural resource.

In addition to its daily water testing, the city is launching a river ambassador program using a $5,000 grant from the EPA. About 30 volunteers will walk through the crowds wearing lime green T-shirts decorated with questions about the river, such as “Why isn’t the river blue?” and “Are there fish in the river?”