Division of Water Quality works to ensure ocean, sounds safe for swimmers

North Carolina has lost its Beach Bum status — and J.D. Potts doesn’t mind a bit.

Potts loves the state’s coastal waters as much as anybody, but the Beach Bum title bestowed on the state in 1996 wasn’t a call for kicking back in the sand and relaxing under the sun.

“The Natural Resources Defense Council in 1996 called North Carolina a Beach Bum state because even though we monitored our shellfishing waters, we didn’t have a recreational water quality monitoring program in place,” said Potts, program manager for the N.C. Recreational Water Quality Program.

The label followed on the heels of two issues that put water quality in the spotlight — hog waste lagoon spills and the finding of pfisteria in the Neuse River. Once the General Assembly was back in session, a monitoring program for North Carolina was set in motion.

A two-year trial period started in 1997 turned into a permanent program that is now more than a decade old. The state adopted regulations of the Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health, or BEACH, Act, which was adopted by Congress in 2000 and established uniform criteria for testing, monitoring and notifying the public of possible coastal recreation water problems.

Monitoring program

North Carolina has approximately 320 miles of ocean shoreline; and under the program, the N.C. Shellfish Sanitation and Recreational Water Quality Section monitors coastal waters including ocean beaches, sounds and estuarine rivers. The section collects more than 6,000 water samples a year from 240 stations where swimming and recreational activity take place.

Monitoring takes place year-round, with sites sampled most frequently during the swimming season that runs from April 1 through Oct. 31. How frequently a site is sampled also depends on the level of usage.

Tier 1 ocean beaches and other high-use sites are sampled once a week from April through Sept. 30.

Tier 2 and Tier 3 sites are sound-side areas with less use, with Tier 2 locations such as the Intracoastal Waterway, tidal creeks and exposed shoals primarily used on the weekends and Tier 3 sites used infrequently or for special events such as triathlons or raft races. Tier 2 and 3 sites are sampled twice a month.

All sites are sampled twice a month in October and once a month November through March.

More often than not, their work will go unnoticed by beach visitors and others enjoying the coastal waters, but public notices are issued if bacteriological standards are exceeded for safe bodily contact with the water.

“Protecting the public health is the whole reason we’re doing the sampling,” Potts said.

Water samples are tested for enterococcoi, which are indicator organisms. They are not harmful themselves but they are present at the same time other organisms that can cause illness.

If the swimming standard is exceeded, a news release is sent out and signs are posted at a site advising against swimming until further sampling shows that standards are back within normal range.

Fortunately, Potts said, North Carolina does not have a large number of advisories. And when advisories are issued, most involve soundside waters and last only a day or two.

In 2009, there were 50 swimming advisories; and so far this year there have been 41 advisories issued.

In the 2010 Testing the Waters report recently released by the NRDC, North Carolina ranked seventh among 30 states in beach water quality, with 3 percent of the water samples taken in 2009 exceeding national standards. The exceedance rate in each Onslow and Carteret counties was listed as 2 percent.

The report found that 7 percent of beachwater samples nationwide in 2009 violated health standards.

That’s not too bad, but Potts has his differences with the way the report determines the percentage.

“What they did is lump all our high-usage resort areas in with the low-usage sound-side so the low-usage sound-side sites raise the total percentage,” Potts said.

Separate the two and you’ll find that high-use ocean sites, which include the beach accesses used by many who live in and visit the county, saw less than 1 percent of their samples exceed standards.

It’s the lower-use sound-side sites where there are more likely to be problem spots.

The reason, Potts said, is stormwater run-off.

In the ERDC report stormwater runoff was the primary known source of pollution at beaches nationwide and North Carolina is no different.

Potts said that while dune systems in place along most of the state’s coastline help protect the ocean beaches from pollutants, sound-side sites are more likely to see direct run-off, whether it is from urban development or rural areas where fecal contamination can come from birds and animals.

People feeding sea gulls, for instance, was a likely cause for swimming advisories posted earlier this summer at Cape Lookout National Seashore’s ferry dock near the lighthouse.

“Generally speaking, our ocean waters have excellent water quality,” he said. “There are times after it rains on our sound side that we do have elevated bacteria counts . . . but generally speaking we have good water quality in North Carolina and we have very good to excellent water quality on the ocean side.”

Potts said North Carolina’s recreational water quality monitoring is a comprehensive program with a mission of protecting the public’s health.

And while the state has a good showing in the NRDC report, Potts steers away from comparing one state’s monitoring program with another. For instance, he said, New Hampshire ranked at the top with 1 percent of its water samples exceeding national standards but it has just 16 coastal and estuarine beaches lining 18 miles of Atlantic waters.

“This report is not a good tool to compare one state’s water quality monitoring program to another state’s program,” he said.

Potts said full information about North Carolina’s recreational water quality program as well as an archive of advisories can be found online at deh.enr.state.nc.us/shellfish/index.htm.