Published August 6, 2004
TALLAHASSEE -- The number of beach advisories and closings because of excessive ocean pollution more than doubled in Florida last year, a national environmental group said Thursday. Some of the increase, however, can be attributed to better water quality monitoring.
The Natural Resources Defense Council said the 307 beaches in Florida monitored by health officials for pollution had swimming advisories or were closed on 3,986 days in 2003, up from 1,745 in 2002.
The national environmental group annually compiles a list of closings and advisories caused by pollution.
Volusia County advised swimmers to stay out of the water a total of 164 days in 2003, up from 9 in 2002. Flagler, meanwhile, had zeroes across the board: no advisories issued either year.
Some of the increase in Volusia and other counties is likely because of more frequent testing, the group notes. In August 2002, the state Department of Health expanded its beach monitoring from every other week to once a week.
Stricter requirements for deciding when coastal water is considered polluted was also at work. The standard for the amount of fecal coliform bacteria that must be present for water to be considered polluted was lowered.
That stricter criteria has produced 26 swim advisories so far in 2004 on Volusia beaches, even though bacteria levels never reached the "poor" range, said Chip Schelble, environmental manager for the Volusia County Health Department.
No local beaches were closed in 2003 or this year; the health department is authorized only to issue advisories under the state's Healthy Beaches program, Schelble said.
The data for Florida beaches is based on state Health Department testing for coliform and another bacterium called enterococcus.
Other reasons cited for the spike by the council included an increase in rain in 2003, which leads to polluted runoff from cities eventually flowing into the ocean.
A spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, Russell Schweiss, said the state also just began monitoring for enterococcus midway through last year, so the higher number of closures would be affected by that too.
Bay County in the Panhandle had the highest number of days when beaches were closed or under a pollution advisory in 2003, the group said. The county is home to Panama City Beach, a popular spring break and summer vacation spot.
Across the country, there were more than 18,000 days of closings and advisories in 2003 at ocean and Great Lakes beaches, an increase of more than 51 percent from 2002.
Linda Young, Southeast director for the Clean Water Network, said that it's good that more monitoring is being done, but that Florida needs to do more to stop the pollution that's getting into Florida's coastal waters.
"We need to look to the source of the problem and fix it," Young said.
All of the advisories in Florida were for elevated levels of bacteria, but the state Department of Health, which keeps track of monitoring in each of the counties, didn't collect data about where pollution is coming from, Young said. That makes it hard to determine how to fix the problem, she said.
Environmentalists suspect, however, that the primary causes are two common pollution sources: simple stormwater runoff and untreated sewage.