A statement by a representative of SC DHEC in the Sun News article on the NRDC ’study’ of beach water quality stuck out to me. 

Quoting Sean Torrens, regional beach monitoring manager of the Horry Department of Health and Environmental Control:

“… when we sample, we sample during worst-case scenario – after a rainfall, during a low tide,” Torrens said. “It doesn’t mean that the beach is getting dirtier, we’re just getting smarter on when to find elevated levels [of bacteria].”

Mr. Torrens’ statement confirms my suspicion, that SC samples Tier 1 beaches (all of which are along the Grand Strand) with an eye for the ‘worst case scenario’, which is also the instance that is likely to produce the most beach advisories and closings.

Sensing that the sampling patterns may not be consistent from State to State, I checked out the study results from North Carolina and New Jersey.  As expected, these two beach states don’t take the same aggressive monitoring approach as South Carolina.

 

North Carolina and New Jersey do not sample only at low tide, and it isn’t apparent that they sample after rainfall events as it appears that South Carolina does.  Reviewing the summary sheets for NC and NJ makes their beaches appear as clean as nature created them. 

I have been to beaches on the NC and NJ coast, and they are not significantly different than Myrtle Beach, in my opinion.  The NRDC data suggests that NC beaches rarely ever exceed the water quality standard.  Let’s look at Brunswick County, the closest NC beaches to the Grand Strand, and heavily developed (although not as densely as Myrtle Beach).

Looking at the Tier 1 beaches in Brunswick County, NC, a few have exceed the standard 3% of the time, and one exceeded it 4% of the time.  But digging a little deeper, 3% of 34 samples is one sample, and 4% of 28 total samples is also only one sample.  How much do you want to bet that the one sample that failed was right after a rain event? 

Not to knock some beautiful Brunswick County beaches, but many of the barrier islands along the Brunswick County coast still treat their sewage using septic tanks!  Most of these islands have no public sewer system.  Where does the effluent from these septic tanks go?  Just asking… 

Myrtle Beach, and most of the Grand Strand is on a public sewage system that treats the wastewater miles away from the ocean.  The effluent from the treatment plants does not go directly into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Jersey shore is even more heavily developed than Myrtle Beach, yet based on the NRDC study, all of New Jersey’s beaches are cleaner than Myrtle Beach.  Atlantic City? Wildwood? NEWARK? all have cleaner surf water – with more swimmers – than little ole’ Myrtle Beach? 

From the New Jersey summary page:

Samples are taken 12 to 18 inches below the surface in water that is between knee and chest deep. Routine sampling is conducted on Monday mornings. [emphasis added]

No mention of sampling during low tide, or after a rain event.  An earlier paragraph lists several beaches that are automatically closed after a rain event, but it is not clear of those ‘automatic’ closures are included in the total closures used as the basis for comparison of the NRDC study. 

New Jersey has 127 miles beach at 325 public beaches.  A quick look at the data indicates a huge number of these beaches are Tier 1 beaches, yet advisories and closings are rare.  Why?  Especially when you consider that New Jersey has 17 wastewater treatment plants that discharge directly into the Atlantic Ocean, according to the NRDC report.  Surely none of these discharge points is anywhere near a public beach, right?

Is SC DHEC making our beaches appear more polluted than the other states?  Based on this study, and sites like Earth911.org, a tourist would think that the Jersey shore was less polluted than the South Carolina shore. 

Although all the states are now using the same bacterial indicator, and appear to reference the same threshold for issuing an advisory, each State is left to decide how they want to implement their sampling program.  South Carolina’s program may be better at protecting the public, but in the hands of the NRDC, and hyped in the Sun News, their aggressive monitoring makes our beaches appear dirtier than our neighbors.  Which is not necessarily true.

It is not easy to find additional beach monitoring information and results on SCDHEC’s own website.  Maybe they want us to only find this information from the likes of the NRDC.  But I found an interesting report, updated by SCDHEC in 2003, that outlined their sampling program.  This pdf document can be found here.

I have excerpted the most interesting section from this document:

A study to determine levels of bacteria in the surf of South Carolina beaches under varying site and environmental conditions was conducted with ten local governments in 1997. One sampling site was selected for each two to three miles of beach, and one each at the furthest reaches of accessible beach within each participant’s jurisdiction. In areas with swashes or storm water discharges to the beach, sites at their confluence with the ocean, and 100 feet on either side, were selected. At a minimum, the two sites with the highest estimated storm flows in each municipality or jurisdiction were included. Samples were collected in dry weather at high and low tide and in wet weather at high and low tide. “Dry” weather meant that three or more days had passed since the last rain. “Wet” weather samples were collected within three hours of the first rain of 0.1 inches or more, following a dry period. Over 1,400 surf and storm water samples were collected during this study. Major finding of the study were:
·  In areas with no storm water outlets or swashes, the geometric mean did not
exceed 35 CFU/100mL and all individual sample results were less than 104
CFU/100mL regardless of weather conditions.
·  Beaches with discharges from swashes and/or storm water outlets showed
variability based on weather. Dry weather samples from these areas did not
exceed the EPA recommended geometric mean (35 CFU/100mL). Wet weather effects on surf bacteria varied from site to site and with rainfall amount; results from many samples exceeded the single-sample limit. In general, highest single sample densities were associated with rainfall amounts greater than one inch.  [emphasis added]

This study, completed in 1997, confirms my suspicions.  Myrtle Beach’s water quality is as high as you will find anywhere in the country.  The only time you should be concerned is immediately after a major rainfall, and even then, only in the vicinity of a major swash or storm water outfall pipe.  All the other numbers and ‘beach closure days’ is just so much nonsense used by the NRDC to generate their annual report.

Remember – as the NRDC’s own report states: 

It is impossible to make direct comparisons between states or to assess trends over time on the basis of advisory and closure data.

And yet this is exactly what they base their entire report on – annual beach closure data from the individual States.