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Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches 8/7/2007 News Release

Executive Summary

Click here for a full copy of the report

In 2006 there were more beach closings and advisories than at any other time in the 17 years the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been tracking them. The number of closing and advisory days at ocean, bay, and Great Lakes beaches jumped 28 percent to more than 25,000, confirming that our nation’s beaches continue to suffer from serious water pollution.

For the second consecutive year, we were able to determine not only the number of closings and advisories, but also the number of times that each beach violated current public health standards. This year, a curious picture emerged: while the number of closing/advisory days increased, the percent of all samples exceeding national health standards decreased to 7 percent in 2006 from 8 percent in 2005. The culprit is stormwater runoff: the number of closing/advisory days due to stormwater doubled to more than 10,000 in 2006. The structures and infrastructures of our coastal cities and towns create the conditions for rain to wash infectious bacteria, viruses, and parasites into our beachwater. In fact, in many of the more populated coastal areas, health officials are so sure that heavy rains will wash sewage, nutrients, and debris into our coastal recreational waters, that they don’t even wait for the results of monitoring before taking action to protect the public – they close beaches or issue advisories preemptively. In 2006, 79 percent of the closing/advisory days due to stormwater contamination were preemptive. Hawaii, which had record amounts of rain in 2006, accounts for the largest share of preemptive closing/advisory days.

Closings and advisories increase at high-risk beaches
For the first time this year, our report puts a special focus on our nation’s highest risk beaches—those with the greatest amount of use and/or proximity to potential pollution sources. This new area of focus is the result of a peer review process NRDC undertook with five professionals from local and state health agencies, academia, and the research community.

States must identify their highest risk beaches when they receive federal Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act (BEACH Act) grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We found that closing/advisory days at these so-called “Tier 1” beaches steadily increased at a rate of 3 percent per year from 2004 through 2006.

Heavy rains in some areas, more frequent monitoring, and uncontrolled stormwater and sewage pollution appear to be the major factors contributing to the steady increase. Ninety-seven percent of Tier 1 beaches are monitored at least once a week compared to 79 percent of all monitored beaches.

Polluted Water Hurts Coastal economies
Dirty coastal waters not only threaten our health, they hurt our economy. Coastal “tourism and recreation constitute some of the fastest growing business sectors - enriching economies and supporting jobs in communities virtually everywhere along the coasts of the continental United States, southeast Alaska, Hawaii, and our island territories and commonwealths,” according to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.

That translates into new employment opportunities: in 2000, U.S. coastal tourism and recreation created 1.67 million jobs, a 41 percent increase from 1990, earning workers
$13.8 billion in wages. Annual economic output nearly doubled during the same time period to $29.5 billion.

But U.S. “beachonomics” might have been more robust if it were not for the condition of our coastal waters. Some 45 percent of our waters assessed by states are not clean enough for fishing or swimming, according to EPA data from 2000, the most recent national information available.

In 2006, 8 percent of all water samples taken at beaches across the country exceeded the federal minimum public health–based monitoring standard, showing no improvement over the previous year. Worse yet, the federal public-health standard is more than 20 years old, does not provide information on the full range of waterborne illnesses that make beachgoers sick, and usually provides information that is
24–48 hours old. So, even if a beach is deemed “safe” under the federal public health standard, it may still contain undetected human or animal waste that can make swimmers sick.

In the BEACH Act, Congress required the EPA to modernize this outdated standard, but the EPA has not yet done so. Last summer, NRDC sued the EPA to force it to comply with the BEACH Act by accelerating its timetable for proposing new standards, setting standards that fully protect the public, and establishing testing methods that will enable public health officials to make prompt decisions about closing their beaches and issuing advisories. Americans need to know that the waters in which we swim, surf, and dive are safe.

At a minimum, that means that recreational waters must be tested regularly, and the results must be measured against effective health standards. When waters do not meet these standards, authorities must promptly and clearly notify the public.

NRDC finds that authorities are not controlling beach pollution sources
While authorities are doing a better job monitoring beaches than in the past, that monitoring reveals the extent to which they are failing to clean up the sources of beachwater pollution.

Closings and advisories are rising steadily, and most authorities are not even attempting to identify pollution sources, much less control them. One problem is that BEACH Act grants are currently not available for source identification and correction, so NRDC is supporting federal legislation, the Beach Protection Act of 2007, that would double the amount of funding for BEACH Act grants and allow them to be used for sanitary surveys, source tracking, and other means of identifying and addressing the direct sources of the contamination. Further improvements to monitoring and public notification programs should include expanding them to cover all designated coastal beaches and popular inland beaches.

Meanwhile, NRDC’s lawsuit is already prodding the EPA to move forward with developing a new health standard and faster test methods. Finally, it is time for the EPA and state and local authorities to seriously address the sources of beachwater pollution, which most often is stormwater and sewage pollution. Prevention is the best way to make sure that a day at the beach will not turn into a night in the bathroom, or worse, in a hospital emergency room.

Recommendations For improving beachwater quality and protecting swimmers’ health

• The EPA should accelerate its timetable for proposing new health standards for beachwater quality, set standards that fully protect the public, and establish testing methods that will enable public health officials to make prompt decisions about closing their beaches and issuing advisories.
• The EPA and states should tighten and enforce controls on all sources of beachwater pollution. Controls on sewage overflows, urban stormwater, and other sources of polluted runoff are particularly critical. The best way to prevent swimmers from getting sick is to clean up the water.
• Congress should pass the Beach Protection Act of 2007, S. 1506, HR 2537, which would reauthorize the federal BEACH Act of 2000, double the authorized funding and allow that funding to be used for identifying and correcting sources of beachwater contamination, require EPA to approve rapid test methods for monitoring beachwater pollution, and improve coordination between the public health officials who monitor the beachwater and the environmental agencies who regulate the sources of beachwater pollution.
• Congress should substantially increase the federal appropriations available to meet clean water and beach protection needs through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, federal BEACH Act grants, and eventually, a Clean Water Trust Fund or other dedicated source of clean water funding.
• The EPA should promptly and effectively implement and enforce the BEACH Act by setting and enforcing minimum standards for all BEACH Act recipients to ensure comprehensive state and local monitoring of beachwater quality and prompt public notification when bacterial standards are exceeded.
• State and local governments should make preventing beachwater pollution a priority. They should adopt monitoring and closure programs that adequately protect the public, and they should do sanitary surveys to identify and then remedy the sources of beachwater pollution.
• State and local governments should issue preemptive advisories where a correlation between rainfall and elevated bacteria levels exists or when sewer overflows or other catastrophic events jeopardize beachwater safety.
• A portion of the revenues generated by tourism should be allocated to monitoring and prevention programs to ensure that swimming in coastal waters does not jeopardize the health of beachgoers.
• Voters should support increased federal, state, and local funding for urban stormwater programs and for repairing, rehabilitating, and upgrading our aging sewer systems. The public also should support funding for maintaining and expanding natural areas (wetlands, shoreline buffers, coastal vegetation) that trap and filter pollution before it reaches the beach.
• Individuals can help clean up beach pollution. Simple measures, including conserving water, redirecting runoff, using such natural fertilizers as compost for gardens, maintaining septic systems, and properly disposing of animal waste, litter, toxic household products, and used motor oil can reduce the amount of pollution in coastal waters.