Counting the Days Beach Closings
Things are getting serious at the beach. The National Resources Defense Council recently reported that in 2003, the US experienced 18,000 days of beach closings and advisories because of poor water quality—a 50% increase over 2002. Almost nine-tenths were because of high bacteria levels.
Worse still is the fact that in 68% of cases, the sources of pollution were not identified. Even as we develop more sophisticated measures to identify causes of contamination, such as genetic bacterial source tracking, it's often difficult to figure out where the bacteria are coming from: leaking sewer and septic systems, dry-weather runoff contributions, livestock operations, wildlife, or pets.
The consequences for swimmers who come in contact with contaminated water range from mild gastrointestinal upsets to more serious problems, such as a case in Delaware, where an environmental scientist taking sediment samples with an open cut on his arm reportedly contracted an infection that kept him hospitalized for a week.
The Whole Picture
The alarming jump in closures and advisories—50% in one year—is due partly to the growing size of the problem and partly to the way we're looking at it, and it's important to separate the reasons. Reports of dramatic change tend to make people skeptical, and rightly so; they wonder if someone is exaggerating the extent of the problem to make a point.
One factor in the increase, undoubtedly, is the fact that more pollutants are reaching our surface waters, and it's definitely a cause for concern that we can't identify sources for the majority of them. However, another contributor to the increase is that both the standards themselves and the way we measure have changed. As the problem gets more attention, more money is spent to address it, leading to more frequent monitoring. To some extent, there are more beach closures simply because we're looking harder for the problem.
In addition, more states are adopting stricter water-quality standards. The Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act of 2000 required states with coastal recreational waters to include in their water-quality standards criteria for bacteria that would protect human health at least to the extent that the EPA's own criteria do. In November 2004, EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt signed a rule establishing federal standards for states that had not yet adopted sufficient criteria under the BEACH Act. About half the coastal states had already put in place EPA-equivalent standards for some or all of their recreational waters, others were in the process of doing so at the time the rule was signed, and a few had not yet started; the November rule will step up the process for the waters that are not yet covered. The more stringent standards—those already in place and those being put into effect now—have been and will continue to trigger more advisories and closures.
The New Normal
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A similar situation occurs fairly frequently with medical standards. For example, in 2003, the National Institutes of Health revised the guidelines for blood pressure, lowering the optimum reading. The goal was to alert people sooner to a potential health problem, giving them a chance to make changes before they were at serious risk of complications. All to the good—except that about 45 million Americans, or 22% of the population, who were previously classified as having "normal" blood pressure now fell into a new "prehypertensive" category. Some news stories at the time suggested that the aggregate American blood pressure had suddenly and drastically increased, as though something had happened virtually overnight to raise our collective readings. Of course the status quo had not changed; what had changed was the way we classified it.
Faced with such seemingly improbable numbers, many people choose to ignore them altogether rather than figure out what's really behind the change. The situation at our beaches——in terms of human health and economics—is too important to allow that to happen. We need to emphasize to those who are affected, the people who go to the beach for recreation, that the "beach closed" signs they're seeing with more frequency are not arbitrary, but are part of the effort to both protect them and ultimately solve the problem.
Author's Bio: Janice Kaspersen is the editor of Stormwater magazine.
January-February 2005
Counting the Days Beach Closings
Things are getting serious at the beach. The National Resources Defense Council recently reported that in 2003, the US experienced 18,000 days of beach closings and advisories because of poor water quality—a 50% increase over 2002. Almost nine-tenths were because of high bacteria levels. Worse still is the fact that in 68% of cases, the sources of pollution were not identified. Even as we develop more sophisticated measures to identify causes of contamination, such as genetic bacterial source tracking, it's often difficult to figure out where the bacteria are coming from: leaking sewer and septic systems, dry-weather runoff contributions, livestock operations, wildlife, or pets.
The consequences for swimmers who come in contact with contaminated water range from mild gastrointestinal upsets to more serious problems, such as a case in Delaware, where an environmental scientist taking sediment samples with an open cut on his arm reportedly contracted an infection that kept him hospitalized for a week.
The Whole Picture
The alarming jump in closures and advisories—50% in one year—is due partly to the growing size of the problem and partly to the way we're looking at it, and it's important to separate the reasons. Reports of dramatic change tend to make people skeptical, and rightly so; they wonder if someone is exaggerating the extent of the problem to make a point.
One factor in the increase, undoubtedly, is the fact that more pollutants are reaching our surface waters, and it's definitely a cause for concern that we can't identify sources for the majority of them. However, another contributor to the increase is that both the standards themselves and the way we measure have changed. As the problem gets more attention, more money is spent to address it, leading to more frequent monitoring. To some extent, there are more beach closures simply because we're looking harder for the problem.
In addition, more states are adopting stricter water-quality standards. The Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act of 2000 required states with coastal recreational waters to include in their water-quality standards criteria for bacteria that would protect human health at least to the extent that the EPA's own criteria do. In November 2004, EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt signed a rule establishing federal standards for states that had not yet adopted sufficient criteria under the BEACH Act. About half the coastal states had already put in place EPA-equivalent standards for some or all of their recreational waters, others were in the process of doing so at the time the rule was signed, and a few had not yet started; the November rule will step up the process for the waters that are not yet covered. The more stringent standards—those already in place and those being put into effect now—have been and will continue to trigger more advisories and closures.
The New Normal
A similar situation occurs fairly frequently with medical standards. For example, in 2003, the National Institutes of Health revised the guidelines for blood pressure, lowering the optimum reading. The goal was to alert people sooner to a potential health problem, giving them a chance to make changes before they were at serious risk of complications. All to the good—except that about 45 million Americans, or 22% of the population, who were previously classified as having "normal" blood pressure now fell into a new "prehypertensive" category. Some news stories at the time suggested that the aggregate American blood pressure had suddenly and drastically increased, as though something had happened virtually overnight to raise our collective readings. Of course the status quo had not changed; what had changed was the way we classified it.
Faced with such seemingly improbable numbers, many people choose to ignore them altogether rather than figure out what's really behind the change. The situation at our beaches——in terms of human health and economics—is too important to allow that to happen. We need to emphasize to those who are affected, the people who go to the beach for recreation, that the "beach closed" signs they're seeing with more frequency are not arbitrary, but are part of the effort to both protect them and ultimately solve the problem.