Protecting Our Atlantic Legacy Reports

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Executive Summary

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As the new home of MASSPIRG's environmental work, Environment Massachusetts can be contacted regarding this report. 

In 2005 there were more beach closings and advisories than at any other time in the 16 years the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been tracking them. The number of closing and advisory days at ocean, bay, and Great Lakes beaches topped 20,000, confirming that our nation’s beaches continue to suffer from serious water pollution.

Dirty coastal waters not only threaten our health but hurt our economy. Coastal “tourism and recreation constitute some of the fastest growing business sectors—enriching economies and supporting jobs in communities virtually everywhere along the coasts of the continental United States, southeast Alaska, Hawaii, and our island territories and commonwealths,” according to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.1 That translates into new employment opportunities: In 2000, U.S. coastal tourism and recreation generated 1.67 million jobs, a 41 percent increase from 1990, earning workers $13.8 billion in wages. Annual economic output nearly doubled during the same time period, to $29.5 billion.

But U.S. “beachonomics” might have been more robust if not for the condition of our coastal waters. Some 45 percent of our waters assessed by state agencies are not clean enough for fishing or swimming, according to EPA data from 2000, the most recent year for which national information is available. In 2005, 8 percent of all water samples taken at beaches across the country exceeded the national daily bacterial standard—the outmoded standard that the EPA was supposed to update to adequately protect the public. Americans need to know that the waters in which we swim, surf, and dive are safe. At a minimum, that means that recreational waters must be tested regularly, and the results must be measured against effective health standards. When waters do not meet these standards, authorities must promptly and clearly notify the public.

Over the last 16 years Testing the Waters has helped trigger the expansion of beachwater monitoring programs across the United States and prompted Congress to pass new laws—particularly the federal BEACH Act of 2000. Between the time NRDC first issued this report in 1991 and the passage and implementation of the BEACH Act, monitoring programs were initiated or expanded in 13 coastal and Great Lakes states: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, and Texas. And as a result of federal grants now available to states through the BEACH Act, every coastal and Great Lakes state has a monitoring and public notification program in place.

But if authorities are doing a better job of monitoring beaches than in the past, that monitoring also reveals the extent to which they are failing to clean up the sources of beachwater pollution. Closings and advisories are rising steadily, and most authorities are not even attempting to identify pollution sources, much less control them. Further improvements to monitoring and public notification programs should include expanding the programs to cover all designated coastal beaches and popular inland beaches. Meanwhile, if successful, NRDC’s lawsuit will prod the EPA to move more quickly to implement a new health standard.

Finally, in addition to those needed improvements in the federal standard, it is time for the EPA and state and local authorities to seriously address the sources of beachwater pollution, which most often is stormwater and sewage pollution. Prevention is the best way to make sure that a day at the beach will not turn into a night in the bathroom or, worse, in a hospital emergency room.