California beaches are tested for water quality

San Diego October 24, 2006 - Regulators are monitoring the water quality of more U.S. beaches than ever before, but nagging questions remain about the accuracy and timeliness of the testing procedures.

In late July a mysterious surge in bacteria levels prompted government officials to close 18 miles of Mission Bay beaches for five days.

The source of contamination was never pinpointed through testing methods that take 24 to 96 hours to complete. This lag time between collecting water samples and receiving test results – caused mostly by old-fashioned ways of incubating bacteria – often means that beaches are posted with contamination warnings long after the pollution has dissipated.

Breakthroughs in science and technology – partly the result of federal spending to combat bioterrorism – are leading to techniques that can detect polluted water in several minutes or a few hours. Researchers are trying to fine-tune them for eventual use nationwide.

In addition to being slow, testing currently used by public-health agencies cannot detect viruses and other pathogens that cause illness. The tests can only indicate the presence of certain bacteria such as E. coli and enterococcus, which are tracers for pathogens found in raw sewage.

Many of these bacteria are benign, and they're often deposited by birds and animal droppings. So testing for them can lead to false scares, in which water-quality regulators post contamination warnings at beaches that actually are safe for swimming and boating.

A recent study conducted at Mission Bay concluded that beach visitors weren't getting sick even though the water and shoreline were full of the so-called tracer bacteria.

In 1997, about 1,000 public beaches nationwide were tested regularly for bacteria. Today, more than 3,500 shoreline segments from Maine to California are monitored for bacteria during all or part of the year.

California leads the country in the number of beaches tested. Last year, its public-health departments took nearly 29,000 water samples at 562 beaches from Crescent City to Imperial Beach. San Diego County has 104 spots that are monitored weekly between April 1 and Oct. 31, and roughly 50 sites tested weekly from November to March.

The expansion of beach monitoring began in 2000 with passage of the federal Beach Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act, also known as the “beach bill.” The legislation was the brainchild of Encinitas attorney Gary Sirota, a former legal adviser to the Surfrider Foundation. The law created grants for states that adopt water-quality standards and tell the public about violations of those standards.

Denise Keehner, an EPA official who oversees the national beach monitoring program, indicates the goal: “Today, more than ever before in history, local citizens are able to understand what the water quality is at their beaches,” she said. “Our long-term goal is not merely to prevent people from swimming in dirty water, but to get the water cleaned up."

SOURCE: Signonsandiego.com
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