Community Corner

Beach Closures Were Up in 2012, But N.J. Maintains Clean Record

Spike in closures from a one-day event in LBI; overall 4 percent of testing showed heightened bacteria levels

New Jersey's beaches were the seventh-cleanest out of 30 coastal states, and a spike in beach closures last summer was mainly the result of a one-day event in a specific area.

The Natural Resources Defense Council this week released its annual 'Testing the Waters' report, which chronicles – state by state – the health of coastal waterways.

At the Jersey Shore, 4 percent of water samples tested in 2012 exceeded national standards for various contaminants. The state has 449 ocean and back bay beaches, half of which have their waters tested weekly, the report said.

The beaches with the highest percent of bacteria exceedance rates of the state standard in 2012 were Beachwood Beach in Beachwood at 35 percent; Avon Road in Pine Beach at percent; East Beachwood Beach West in Beachwood at 27 percent;, West Beachwood Beach West in Beachwood at 27 percent; and Windward Beach in Brick at 25 percent.

All of the beaches with high exceedance rates were backwater beaches; none were located on the ocean.

The most striking statistic in the report – that beach closures and advisories were up 87 percent last summer over 2011 – can be attributed to an anomaly: specifically, a one-day beach closure on Long Beach Island due to reports of medical waste washing up. Additionally, the Ocean County Health Department began issuing advisories for the first time, which increased the total number of advisories in New Jersey from previous years, the report said.

There were no extended or permanent beach closures in 2012, according to the report, and the overall rate of beaches that exceeded national standards for bacteria remained about the same as in previous years. The 4 percent figure in 2012 was compared in the report to a 3 percent rate in 2011, a 2 percent rate in 2010 and a 4 percent rate in 2009.

The report also shed light on some good news in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which resulted in 10 billion gallons of raw and partially treated sewage washing into New York and New Jersey waterways. Preseason water quality sampling did not detect exceedances of the state's swimming and shellfishing standards, according to the report.

The news is a mixed bag, and certainly not all rosy, advocates say.

Jeff Tittel, of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, said the report should be a "wakeup call to New Jersey that we are not doing enough to protect water quality at our beaches."

Tittel, whose group partnered with the NRDC in putting out the report, called on the state to test beaches more frequently, including on weekends.

"Half our beaches do not get tested and the ones that do only get tested on Monday," said Tittel, in a statement. "So if it rains on Friday people could be swimming in polluted water not knowing until testing is done. That needs to be changed. It takes days in New Jersey to get test results yet there is technology out there that will get results in a few hours, which is what we should have."

According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, however, the state's water quality holds up well. Beaches, according to data from the department's Water Monitoring Service, are cleared to be open 99.8 percent of the time.


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