July 2010 Testing the Waters A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches TWENTIETH ANNUAL REPORT Authors Mark Dorfman Kirsten Sinclair Rosselot Project Design and Development David Beckman Natural Resources Defense Council Jon Devine Natural Resources Defense Council Michelle Mehta Natural Resources Defense Council About NRDC The Natural Resources Defense Council is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 1.3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montana, and Beijing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org. Acknowledgments NRDC wishes to acknowledge the support of The Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, The Campbell Foundation, Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Inc., Bernard F. and Alva B. Gimbel Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Pisces Foundation, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, Sandler Foundation, Mary Jean Smeal Clean Water Fund, and The Summit Fund of Washington. NRDC would like to thank Henry Henderson, Josh Mogerman, and Mariya Stepanenko for researching and reviewing various aspects of the report this year and Carol James for distributing the report nation wide. Thank you to Alexandra Kennaugh for managing the production of the report, to Bonnie Greenfield for designing it, and to Kathryn McGrath, Will Tam, and Auden Shim for creating a dynamic presentation of the report on the NRDC website. We would also like to thank Ynes Cabral and Linda Escalante for their skillful Spanish translations and Grace Murray and Elise Marton for their proofreading assistance. Many thanks to members of our media team Sherry Goldberg, Courtney Hamilton, Elizabeth Heyd, Serena Ingre, Valerie Jaffee, Jessica Lass, Josh Mogerman, Jenny Powers, and Kate Slusark for orchestrating the release of the report to the press. Thanks to Sarah Chasis, Noah Garrison, Allen Hershkowitz, Larry Levine, Leila Monroe, Adrianna Quintero, Suzanne Struglinski, and Andrew Wetzler for releasing and blogging about the report for NRDC this year and Christy Leavitt and Piper Crowell for arranging releases by chapters of Environment America. We wish also to thank the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for sharing data with us again this year, and to the state program coordinators, who provided information for the state chapters along with review of the monitoring and notification data. Thanks, especially, to all those federal, state, and local officials who work hard every day to keep our beaches clean and to clean up the sources of beachwater pollution. NRDC President: Frances Beinecke NRDC Executive Director: Peter Lehner NRDC Director of Communications: Phil Gutis NRDC Deputy Director of Communications: Lisa Goffredi NRDC Publications Director: Anthony Clark NRDC Publications Editor: Carlita Salazar Project Manager: Alexandra Kennaugh Design and Production: Bonnie Greenfield Copyright 2010 by the Natural Resources Defense Council. TESTING THE WATERS: A GUIDE TO WATER QUALITY AT VACATION BEACHES Table of Contents Executive Summary ..........................................................................................................................................................v National Overview ...........................................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 Sources of Beachwater Pollution .....................................................................................................................................14 Chapter 2 The Impacts of Beach Pollution .....................................................................................................................................20 Chapter 3 Plan of Action ................................................................................................................................................................32 Chapter 4 Beachwater Quality Monitoring Programs and State-by-State Results.............................................................................44 Alabama Florida Louisiana Minnesota North Carolina South Carolina Alaska Georgia Maine Mississippi Ohio Texas California Hawaii Maryland New Hampshire Oregon Virginia Connecticut Illinois Massachusetts New Jersey Pennsylvania Washington Delaware Indiana Michigan New York Rhode Island Wisconsin Figures Figure N-1. Regional Differences in Closing/Advisory Days, 2006–2009 .........................................................................1 Figure N-2. Regional Differences in Percent Exceedance of National Standards, 2006–2009 ...........................................2 Figure N-3. Total Closing/Advisory Days, 2000–2009 (excluding extended and permanent) ...........................................4 Figure N-4. Reported Reasons for Closings/Advisories in 2009 ........................................................................................5 Figure N-5. Report Reasons for Closings/Advisories, 2000–2009 .....................................................................................5 Figure N-6. Sources of Pollution That Caused Closings/Advisories in 2009 .....................................................................6 Figure N-7. Sources of Pollution That Caused Closings/Advisories, 2000–2009 ..............................................................6 Figure N-8. Percent Exceedance for All Coastal and Great Lakes States Combined, 2006–2009.......................................7 (based on 2,655 beaches reported in each of the four years) Figure 1-1. A Rough Illustration of the Prevalence of Combined Sewer Systems in the United States .............................15 Figure 2-1. Influence of Heavy Rainfall on Occurrence of E. coli Infections ...................................................................22 Figure 2-2. Expansion of HAB Problems in the United States ........................................................................................25 Figure 2-3. The Value of the Coastal Economy (2007) ...................................................................................................27 Figure 3-1. A Re-Engineered Stormwater Outfall in Racine, Wisconsin .........................................................................33 Figure 3-2. Lag Time Associated With Current Water Quality Monitoring and Public Notification Methods ................39 Figure 4-1. Why Don’t 2009 Percent Exceedances Match? .............................................................................................49 iii Natural Resources Defense Council Testing the Waters 2010 Tables Table N-1. Rank of States by Percentage of Beachwater Samples Exceeding the National Standard in 2009 .....................8 Table N-2. Beaches With More than 25% of Samples Exceeding the EPA’s Single-Sample Maximum Standards ..............9 for Designated Beach Areas in 2009 (limited to beaches with at least 10 total samples reported for the year Table N-3. Repeat Offenders: 15 Beaches With More Than 25% of Samples Exceeding the EPA’s Single-Sample ..........13 Maximum Standards for Designated Beach Areas, Each Year, 2006–2009 (Alphabetical by State, County, and Beach) Table 2-1. Pathogens and Swimming-Associated Illnesses ...............................................................................................20 Table 2-2. Possible Influence of Climate Change on Climate-Susceptible Pathogens ......................................................23 Table 2-3. Algae and Their Threats to Human Health ....................................................................................................25 Table 2-4. Cost Estimates for Illnesses Associated With Polluted Water Due to Lost Wages and Medical Care ...............28 Table 3-1. Beachwater Quality Standards Required by the BEACH Act .........................................................................37 Table 4-1. State Distribution of BEACH Act Funding for Beachwater Quality Monitoring and Notification .................44 for 2009 and 2010 Table 4-2. State Coastal Beachwater Quality Standards ..................................................................................................46 iv Natural Resources Defense Council Testing the Waters 2010 TESTING THE WATERS: A GUIDE TO WATER QUALITY AT VACATION BEACHES Executive Summary Twentieth Annual Report In 2009, beach closings and advisories hit their sixth-highest level in the 20 years the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been tracking them. The continuing high number of closing and advisory days, combined with a relatively constant level of bacterial contamination at ocean, bay, and Great Lakes beaches, suggests that our nation’s beaches require a more concerted effort to identify and control the sources of water pollution that put swimmers at risk. Even in the relatively dry 2009 beach For the fifth consecutive year, we were able to season, stormwater runoff contributed determine not only the number of closings and advisories, to more than 80% of the closing but also the number of times that each beach violated current public health standards. The percent of beach and advisory days with a reported monitoring samples exceeding national health standards contamination source.