This morning we told a friend we were planning to head down to Jacob Riis beach for the day. Oh no, she reported, the beach is closed for swimming. My husband quickly looked it up on the National Park Service alerts website (Jacob Riis is a National Park). Turns out it was closed yesterday, but they opened again today. Why? Poop. Yes, really. As you can see from any quick search, NYC beaches are really full of poop, all the time. Yet, there are set, acceptable levels of this poop and sometimes water tests exceed them.
The poop levels, actually a bacteria called “enterococci” which will make you very sick, actually go way up when it rains. This is the exact opposite of what it is natural to think. The poop levels go up because the NYC sewage system cannot handle rising water levels. The sewage system for street runoff and for flushing your toilet is the same system..yes, really. Its called a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) system and it is a big problem. Sometimes they have to release untreated, raw sewage because it..you got it..overflows.
Because the rain always causes these issues, the city has a preemptive system of automatic beach condition warnings based on the amount of rainfall and how it has historically impacted each beach they track. Some beaches become potentially unsafe at only .3 inches of rainfall.
With all this emphasis on the water and swimming, I also wondered about the sand. The top level of sand gets cleaned by sun, but what happens to the wet sand far underneath. Nothing good, that’s certain.
You can check the beaches the city monitors here: https://maps.nyc.gov/beach/ The city also offers a handy texting service to check the beach before you head out: Subscribers text “BEACH” to 877-877 to learn the beach status for any of the eight public beaches in New York City.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that between 1.8 and 3.5 million Americans become ill annually from contact with sewage in recreational waters.
Want to know when they dump sewage (on accident or on purpose) in the water around the city? Sign up for the new alert service. It’s not complete yet, but hopefully it will get better even thought the problem will probably not.