from
Beach closings
from ’02 to ’03 rose
on state, national level
BY DANIELLE MEDINA
Correspondent
FILE PHOTO An empty beach in Brick Township earlier this summer.
BRICK — There’s good news and bad news when it comes to New Jersey’s beaches.
The good news is that New Jersey was the first state to institute a mandatory beach protection program that includes a bacteria standard for the water, a testing protocol and closure requirements when elevated levels of bacteria are detected.
The bad news is that ocean and bay beach closings jumped from 31 in 2002 to 188 in 2003, according to a report released by National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on Aug. 5.
The report indicates that beaches in Ocean County were closed 97 times, the most often of the four New Jersey coastal counties surveyed. Monmouth County had 84 closures, Cape May County had seven closures and Atlantic County had zero closures.
The problem is not limited to New Jersey. According to the report, there were 18,284 nationwide closures at U.S. ocean, bay, Great Lakes and freshwater beaches in 2003, up from 12,184 in 2002.
In Brick, Windward Beach, Princeton Avenue, was closed 16 times during the 2003 summer season, which runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Brick Beach and Seventh Avenue Beach were not closed at all during the summer of 2003.
Of Windward Beach’s 16 closings, 15 were due to elevated levels of bacteria in the water and one time was a pre-emptive closing caused by last summer’s blackout, which caused sewer treatment plants to be offline. The longest period of time that Windward Beach was closed was for seven days, from Aug. 5, 2003 to Aug. 12, 2003.
So far in 2004, Windward Beach has been closed only twice and Brick Beach and Seventh Avenue Beach have never been closed, according to Bob Ingenito, the environmental health coordinator at the Ocean County Department of Health (OCDH).
Ingenito said that it is unclear what the drop in beach closings in Brick and other sites can be attributed to, especially since the amount of rainfall from last summer and this summer is similar.
The NRDC report indicated that most beach closings occur after it rains. The rainfall washes pesticides, fertilizers, litter and other pollutants in the oceans and bays.
"Nonpoint source pollution, where a cocktail of pollutants run off from the land into our waterways, is the common culprit when it comes to beach closures," said Kari Jermansen, outreach director for Clean Ocean Action. "These pollutants include pathogens, nutrients and toxic chemicals, putting public heath and marine life at risk."
The beaches are monitored weekly and samples taken are studied for elevated bacteria levels. If a high level of bacteria is detected in the initial sample, a resample is taken to confirm the results. Following the reconfirmation, the beach is closed until bacterial levels return to acceptable levels.
Forty-eight percent of New Jersey’s beach closures in 2003 were due to elevated bacteria levels. Thirty-nine percent of closing days were pre-emptive rain closings. Eleven percent was in response to miscellaneous circumstances and 2 percent were in response to known sewage spill
However, closures do not occur until two days after the samples are taken because of the procedures involved in water testing, and testing does not occur after every rainfall. Facts that trouble Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action.
"New Jersey’s bathing-quality monitoring program continues to set an example for the rest of the U.S., but requires improvements to adequately protect human and ecosystem heath," Zipf said.
Zipf wants to see improvements that include the use of an instantaneous test and immediate closure and public notification; testing after rain events; more monitoring sites; development of more sensitive standards to protect bathers from virus-borne illnesses; and mandatory track-down and elimination of pollution sources when standards are exceeded.
The NRDC report also indicated current federal administrative policies that exacerbate beach water pollution, including cuts to funding of the Clean Water Act; the lowering of sewage treatment standards; the shelving of rules to control raw sewage discharges; and the refusal to set minimum standards to control storm water requirements for developers.
To find out about beach closings in Brick and other Ocean County sites, visit the Ocean County Health Department Web site at www.ochd.org.