This morning I had the opportunity to participate in the San Francisco release of the 19th annual "Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches," report. NRDC's "Testing the Waters" is an annual survey of beachwater quality and public notifications for 3,600 beaches nationwide. The report also gives a five-star rating guide for a selection of America's most popular beaches, based on indicators of beachwater quality, monitoring frequency and use of health standards to protect beachgoers. The report was simultaneously unveiled in Miami, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and this year for the first time in San Francisco.

I presented the findings of the report, while distinguished speakers - Assembly Woman Fiona Ma, Doctor Mark Renneker, Deputy General Manager for the SFPUC Michael Carlin, and Miyoko Sakashita of the Center for Biological Diversity - discussed the important value of this  report.

Every coastal state has a beachwater monitoring program and a system that warns beachgoers when it is not safe to swim. However, our current monitoring system and testing approaches may fail to provide timely information on whether is safe to swim at a particular beach because there is often a delay between the time the beach becomes contaminated and the notification for swimmers to learn about the contamination.  Beach users are then left with a dangerous window in which they are unknowingly swimming in human and animal waste.

Testing the Waters compiles national data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; this year NRDC's report confirms that our nation's beachwater continues to suffer from serious contamination that can make people sick.  The 2008 season was the 4th year in a row that beach closing and advisory days topped 20,000 nationwide.  While there was a 10 percent decrease from 2007 data in closing and advisory days at beaches nationwide (from 22,571 to 20,341 days), dry conditions in many parts of the country and decreased funding for water monitoring in some states (including California) last year may have been the cause for this drop, rather than the decrease in closings being a clear sign of large-scale improvement.

Testing the Waters also found that violations of standards for bacteria - indicating the presence of human or animal waste - were responsible for 73 percent of beach closing and advisory days nationwide.  This is an increase from 71 percent the year before.  

As has been the case every year, stormwater pollution was the largest known cause nationwide of beach closings and advisories, at 37 percent.  Sewage spills and overflows were the second largest known cause at 8 percent, both stormwater pollution and sewage spills and overflows continue to be a serious problem.

In California, the total beach closing and advisory days decreased 13 percent from 2007 to 2008, which caused 4,133 beach closing and advisory days.  Again, the result in the drop may have been largely due to the drought in the state and less-vigilant monitoring due to recent budget cuts in California.  The report found that 81 percent of beach water contamination violations on California beaches were from unknown sources, 3 percent were from stormwater runoff, 9 percent were from sewage spills and overflows, nd 6 percent were from other sources of contamination.

For the first time this year, Testing the Waters explores the effects of climate change on beachwater quality, revealing that climate change is expected to make beachwater pollution worse.  The combined effects of temperature increases and more frequent and intense rainstorms or droughts will lead to increased stormwater runoff, sewer pollution and disease-causing pathogens in nearby waterways.  Specifically, climate change is anticipated to influence the presence in America's beachwater of pathogens that cause stomach flu, diarrhea and neurological problems.

In California and nationwide, there is room to improve beachwater testing and monitoring in order to protect beachgoers from potential waterborne illnesses.

 Testing the Waters offers a number of recommendations for Improving Beachwater Quality and Protecting Swimmers' Health.  Here are just a few of the useful recommendations contained in the report to help reduce pollution in beachwater:

• Green infrastructure and low impact development techniques are essential. These techniques retain and filter rainwater where it falls so it soaks back into the ground, rather than running off into waterways. Examples of green infrastructure include strategically placed rain gardens in yards, tree boxes on city sidewalks, green roofs that use absorbent vegetation on top of buildings, and permeable pavement that allows water to penetrate the material, instead of asphalt or concrete.
• The public also should support federal, state, and local funding for maintaining and expanding natural areas such as wetlands, shoreline buffers, and coastal vegetation that trap and filter pollution before it reaches the beach.
• Voters should support increased federal, state, and local funding for urban stormwater programs and for repairing, rehabilitating, and upgrading our aging sewer systems.
• Individuals can help clean up beach pollution by conserving water, redirecting runoff, using natural fertilizers-such as compost for gardens-maintaining septic systems, and properly disposing of animal waste, litter, toxic household products, and used motor oil can reduce the amount of pollution in coastal waters.
• Congress should pass the Clean Coastal Environment and Public Health Act (H.R. 2093/S. 878), which would reauthorize the federal BEACH Act of2000, increase the authorized funding and allow that funding to be used for identifying and correcting sources of beachwater contamination, require the EPA to approve and states to use rapid test methods for monitoring beachwater pollution, and improve coordination between the public health officials who monitor the beachwater and the environmental agencies who regulate the sources of beachwater pollution.

NRDC has documented the problem of beachwater quality for the past 19 years - the problem won't go away until we clean up the sources of beachwater pollution. Americans want clean water, but too often our government is listening to polluters, not the victims of pollution.