By David Steinkraus
Journal Times | Posted: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 12:00 am
The Natural Resources Defense Council issued a report on Tuesday which found that Wisconsin had one of the worst beach water quality records in the nation in 2007, yet notably absent from its list of problems is Racine.
Beaches north and south of Racine aren't absent, however. On the report's list of U.S. beaches with more than 25 percent of samples exceeding federal water standards are Milwaukee County and Kenosha County.
In Milwaukee County, it's South Shore Beach. Kenosha County makes the list with Pennoyer Park, Alford Park, Simmons Island, Southport Park and Eichelman beaches. Eichelman also made the list of beaches which exceeded that standard in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
NRDC ranks Wisconsin third worst in the nation for the percentage of samples exceeding water standards. Illinois was first and Ohio second.
The NRDC report drew from Environmental Protection Association data, and that's where Julie Kinzelman found some problems. Kinzelman holds a doctorate in environmental science and leads water-quality research in the Racine Health Department.
She noted that the report listed some of the city's beaches more than once on the same day. City workers take several samples on each beach, and they're entered separately on the state's beach-quality Web site.
"I don't know if they pulled this off the (state) Web site, and then interpreted it incorrectly," Kinzelman said. "But it's only one beach, and we only issue one action."
That confusion of numbers would overstate how many times the city's beaches have had problems, she said. This June was the wettest on record, she said.
"We only had one water-quality advisory - at North Beach - no closures."
There also seems to be some confusion in the report over whether pollution sources have been identified.
The NRDC report calls for Congress to pass an updated BEACH Act, and Kinzelman said it's good to have that additional support for what officials have already asked for. Mayors of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Cities Initiative recently passed a resolution calling for more work on pinpointing water contamination sources, and the BEACH Act now in Congress would not only increase funding but shift money toward fixing pollution problems in addition to finding them.
Racine is mentioned in the NRDC report for its work on locating sources of bacterial contamination and on developing a faster method of measuring water quality. This summer, Kinzelman said, the city Health Department is part of an EPA project to test a rapid water quality assessment which depends on screening for DNA instead of growing bacteria from water samples. If it proves reliable, the newer method could produce water quality rating in a few hours instead of about 18.
The full NRDC report is available at
http://www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/ttw/titinx.asp