Sound Health, Beach Closings, Hypoxia

The Sound Health report, written and published by the Long Island Sound Study, came out about a week ago. Some newspaper accounts interpreted it as showing that environmental onditions in the Sound are improving. I've looked at it and I'm not sure I agree. You can read it yourself (and you should), here.

Meanwhile, the Natural Resources Defense Council issued its annual report on beach closings on the Sound. There were fewer in 2007 than in 2006. However you should not be encouraged by this. Since most beach closing are automatically triggered after a heavy rain, all it means is that it rained less last year than the year before. Here's the report.

Dissolved oxygen concentrations are really low in the western end of the Sound, which is bad even if it isn't surprising. Here's what the Connecticut DEP said in its most recent report, which is a week old already:

The 2008 July Hypoxia Survey was conducted 21 and 22 July. Twenty-nine stations were sampled. Engine trouble on 7/25 precluded sampling eleven stations in the central basin/western narrows. Bottom water dissolved oxygen concentrations fell below 4.8 mg/L at 18 stations with ten of those stations falling below 3.5 mg/L and five stations falling below 3.0 mg/L. The lowest concentration was observed at Station A4 (0.68 mg/L). The area of bottom water affected by hypoxia (DO <3.5>

I wish I had time to translate that into plain English, but I don't. Readership of this blog has peaked lately but unfortunately I'm finding less and less time to do the work it takes to keep on top of things, mainly because of work responsibilities -- I'm the acting executive director at Westchester Land Trust, where I've worked for almost eight years, while still serving as communications director. Given how little time I've had over the past two weeks, I don't think things will get better over the next two, and the I'm off for two weeks on Block Island. When school starts, and I'm getting out of bed an ridiculously early hours again, maybe blogging will pick up.

Beach Report: Is the Water Safe?

If you like to swim in salt water and you're wondering just how clean Long Island Sound's beaches are, you have to read yesterday's Hartford Courant story. Here are the money paragraphs:

... Though by and large they are well-groomed and well-managed, on any given summer day, dozens of swimming spots are just one good rainfall away from closing. The problem: storm water runoff that carries feces from wild animals or pets, and contaminants from highways, subdivisions, malls and farms into the water.

Over the last decade, swimmers lost at least 3,000 days to bacteria-related closings, based on The Courant's examination of 10 years of closure data for Long Island Sound beaches and state parks, and four years of records for other lakes and ponds.

And while it's hard to track how many people are getting sick as a result, federal officials say instances of water-born illness contracted in recreational waters are on the rise around the country.

Already this season, the 10 most affected areas have lost at least 45 swimming days to contamination.

Some areas have only occasional problems, and a few are virtually pristine — Hammonasset Beach State Park, the busiest in the state, has not had a closure in at least a decade, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. And beaches east of Fairfield County, including West Haven, have steadily improved.

But several areas continue to suffer persistent problems, and the problem does not discriminate by location or real estate value.

A lot of the beaches in the Courant study are inland. But here's what the authors -- David Funkhouser and Josh Kovner -- say about Sound beaches in Fairfield County.

Fairfield County beaches sit below land paved over with homes, malls, highways and industry: When it rains, instead of filtering through the soil, water is likely to run into storm drains and into the Sound, taking oils, dirt and other contaminants with it. Also, tides flush more lightly here than in the deeper, eastern end of the Sound, where contamination is less of a problem.

At the 144 beaches along the Connecticut coast that report testing data to the state, there were 65 closings for one or more days in 2007; 56 of those were in Fairfield County.

I think by the way that the Courant overstates the issue of people getting sick, not just because many beaches are closed preemptively but because they level of bacteria needed to close a beach is far, far lower than then amount of bacteria needed to make a person sick. Regardless, it's a good story, which everyone who goes to the beach on the Sound should read. Check it out here.

The Courant, by the way, is cutting its news staff by almost 60 jobs, from 232 to 175, which is bad news from Connecticut and the region.

Long Island Beaches Are Closed

The usual: When it rains, it's unsafe for swimming.

To the Beach

Beaches opened over the weekend and the New Haven Register did us a favor by summarizing the access policies and fees in a lot of Connecticut towns (Long Island's beach policies are a mystery to me but then again the beaches are stony and, I think, don't draw as many people as Connecticut's).

I learned that there might be a decision soon on the lawsuit that Stamford's Paul Kempner filed against Greenwich because of the town's restrictive beach access policies. And I learned that Madison's public beach is called the Surf Club and that it's now a relative bargain for out-of-towners to go there:

In Madison, where nonresidents in the past had to pay a parking fee and separate per-person admittance fee to enter the Surf Club and use the beach, visitors will find a new policy in place this summer that charges only a per-vehicle fee. That means the cost of going to the beach for a family of five just dropped from $60 — 10 bucks for the car and 10 per person — to $15.

Scott Erskine, director of recreation in Madison, said the change has nothing to do with the lawsuit from Greenwich.

"We're trying to make it a little more user-friendly," he said.

Anyone who enters the Surf Club on foot or on a bicycle will no longer be charged. Erskine admitted the old policy of charging those people sometimes led to confrontations at the gates.

The $15 car fee is a dollar more than the weekend, out-of-state fee for Hammonasset Beach State Park, but the fee for Connecticut residents is only $9 per car.

Lots of details are on this Connecticut Coastal Access Guide, which is worth bookmarking.

Speaking of access of sorts to the water, the Stamford Advocate writes about why it's so hard to establish more ferry service on the Sound. The one-word answer is "parking." (My former employer, the Gannett corporation, has backed out of its agreement to buy the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time, mainly because Gannett is as anti-union as a newspaper company can be and some employees at the Advocate are represented by the United Autoworkers. My first inclination is to say the decision isn't a bad thing for local news coverage, because Gannett makes money by cutting operating costs to the bone; on the other hand, at my old paper there are still four reporters whose main assignment includes coverage of the environment, which isn't bad at all).

And finally since we're talking about beaches and public access, here's a funny and appropriately unfair account of Greenwich's old access policies, as seen through the eyes of Michael Moore's TV Nation show.