From: Nancy Stoner, director of NRDC's Clean Water Project

Re: The Beach Protection Act (S. 2844)

Human and animal waste is contaminating beachwaters across the United States and led to more than 3,100 advisory days at Florida beaches in 2007. More than half of the advisories were attributed to contamination from stormwater and sanitary sewer overflows and another 9 percent from sources that could not be identified.

When it rains, overflowing sewers, stormwater pipes and treatment plant bypasses dump untreated sewage, contaminated stormwater and bacteria into our beachwaters where it can make swimmers sick. Nationally, 7 percent of beachwater samples collected in 2007 had bacteria levels that violated public health standards. Most often swimmers in beachwater pollution get severe stomach upset, but they can also develop earaches, pinkeye, respiratory ailments, and even very serious ailments like meningitis and hepatitis. Often, swimmers don't realize that their illness was contracted from swimming in contaminated beachwaters.

In 2000, Congress passed the Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act, which provided federal funds to state and local agencies to set up beachwater monitoring and public notification programs. Since then every coastal state in the country, including the Great Lakes, have established programs that test beachwaters for fecal contamination. About half of the 634 public coastal beaches in Florida are being monitored through a program administered by the Florida Dept of Health and supported by these funds.

While those testing programs represent a significant step forward, the tests they use take 24-48 hours to produce results, creating a dangerous window of time in which swimmers may be unknowingly swimming in human or animal waste. In addition, the current federal program supports beachwater monitoring and public notification programs, but not source tracking, sanitary surveys or other means of identifying the sources of beachwater contamination.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) supports the use of testing methods that can detect the pathogens that can cause the full range of waterborne diseases and provide same-day results for prompt public notification of unsafe beachwaters, and federal funding for programs to pinpoint the sources of pollution so they can be cleaned up. Studies are already underway in Florida and several other states to evaluate beachwater monitoring tests and a variety of approaches to tracking the sources of beachwater contamination.

Fortunately, the Beach Protection Act, now pending in Congress, would reauthorize the BEACH Act and improve public health protection in several respects. The Senate now is considering the bipartisan bill (S. 2844), whose original sponsors include Sen. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Sen. Voinovich (R-OH). This bill would increase the funding available to the Florida Department of Health for water testing, authorize new funding for programs to identify the sources of beachwater pollution, require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to approve a rapid testing method, and improve coordination between beachwater managers and the environmental officials who can prevent beachwater pollution. H.R. 2537, the House bill which was sponsored by Rep. Pallone (D-NJ) and Rep. Bishop (D-NY), passed on April 16.

Florida beachgoers should not have to worry about whether or not their beachwaters are contaminated with sewage or the most recent water quality test results are dangerously out of date. If adequately funded, the Beach Protection Act would provide funding to prevent beachwater pollution by tracking down sources so that they can be cleaned up, meaning fewer advisory days at Florida beaches and beachwaters that are safer for swimmers.