Luo et al. [5] have argued for a change in the taxonomy of E. coli, as the newly discovered environmental clades are not distinguished by standard phenotypic tests from classical E. coli. As a practical public health issue, they note that assuming E. coli and closest relatives to be primarily organisms of the gut has resulted in the practice of counting ‘coliform’ bacteria to indicate fecal pollution. The authors' results show the underlying assumption to be mistaken, and they argue that lumping environmentally adapted clades of Escherichia with no apparent virulence as part of the coliform count has been a distraction for public health workers. The authors thus suggest that E. coli be split taxonomically, to separate environmentally adapted clades from gut-adapted clades.