Citation:

Impact/Purpose:

The product provides information on the bacteria criteria used to manage health risks at beaches and other recreational waters, followed by a brief description of three pilot projects and a summary of recreational water quality monitoring issues.

Description:

It has long been recognized that people who swim in waters contaminated with fecal waste are at an increased risk of illness associated with incidental ingestion and dermal contact with these waters. Potential illnesses and diseases include gastrointestinal, respiratory, eye, ear, nose, throat and skin disease. Sources of fecal contamination in recreational waters include storm water runoff, overflows and discharges from wastewater collection and treatment systems, failing septic systems, human waste from boat discharges and people swimming (especially infants and toddlers). Many agencies and organizations monitor water quality during the swimming season and close beaches or alert swimmers with postings if densities of bacterial indicators of fecal contamination exceed health-based action levels. The fact that surrogate bacteria species (indicator organisms) and not pathogens are used to evaluate beach safety, and that high bacteria densities are transient and can appear suddenly, make the task of monitoring the quality of recreational waters more complex than might be expected. From 1998 to 2000, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA NE) provided EMPACT, "Environmental Monitoring for Public Access and Community Tracking program", funds to beach monitoring projects in Massachusetts and Rhode Island as part of EPA "BEACH Program" ("Beaches Environmental Assessment, Closure and Health"). The EMPACT program emphasized providing the public with timely environmental data. In Massachusetts, EMPACT funding was used to enhance existing efforts to monitor water quality and notify the public regarding bacterial conditions in the lower Charles River and at select beaches in Boston Harbor in the Boston metropolitan area. In Rhode Island, funding was provided to enhance similar efforts at several beaches in the upper Narragansett Bay in the Providence metropolitan area. The goal of these projects was to develop pilot programs to improve water quality monitoring and public notification of health risks associated with recreational waters. The purpose of this paper is to describe these projects and some of the lessons learned. The paper follows the following structure: The first section provides a brief presentation of the bacteria criteria used to manage health risks at beaches and other recreational waters. This is followed by a brief description of each of the three pilot projects and more detailed discussions of four themes from these projects that illustrate the objectives and challenges of bacterial monitoring programs. The conclusion attempts to bring these themes together into a coherent summary of recreational water quality monitoring issues illustrated in the paper.

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