Poor summer takes toll on SW beaches

Western Morning News 19th 8th 93 by Derek Lean Environment Editor
Poor summer takes toll on SW beaches
More South West beaches this year are failing to reach EC Quality standards because of the wet summer.
National Rivers Authority regoional tidal waters officer Rupert Grantham confirmed yesterday that sampling up to the end of July had shown that 22 of Devon and Cornwall's 134 designated bathing waters had recorded at least two results which had exceeded the bacteriological standards.
"On that basis they amy be deemed by the Department of the Environment and the EC to have failed.
The NRA does not judge compliance," said Mr Grantham.
But he added: There are no surprises in any of the individual sites, and it is not surprising that monitoring this year is showing a higher number of poor samples. It is because very heavy rainfall earlier this summer has caused high loadings of bacteria to be discharged to the sea from inland sources, including storm sewage overflows and agricultural impacts."
But environmental pressure groups insist that the weather can no longer be an excuse for inadequate water quality and say it is time for an effective anti-pollution system.
Lyn Wetenhall, spokeswoman for Exeter Friends of The Earth, said: "It is pathetic to blame the weather. It just shows what a threadbare system of pollution control we have in this county. We still do not take cleaning our environment seriously enough."
Nicola Husband, of Surfers Against Sewage, said: "we have to cater for our climate. Ultraviolet treatment of discharges is the way to go."
Last year 19 bathing waters during the whole of the season-from May to the end of September-failed to comply.
Set against this the South West did have a major improvement in the quality of sewage discharges around the coastline, and the full effects of this programme would be evident in 1996.
EC bathing waters directives also recognise abnormal weather conditions could cause poor quality.
The results of the NRA would provide the DoE and the EC included information relating to heavy rainfall.
It may be, they would judge that some of the samples had not failed. " They do take weather conditions into account," said Mr Grantham.
He said it was true that bacteria died more quickly in sunny weather, but he did not think that was the fundamental reason that we were getting higher number results. With heavy rain storms, sewage overflows were operating more frequently, and there was the effect of agricultural impacts.
"We have programmes in hand to reduce the impacts of both sources," said Mr Grantham.
The mandatory standards are that the number of faecal coliforms should not exceed 2,000 per 100 millilitres of water and the figure for total coliforms is 10,000. Under the rules 95% of samples have to meet those figures.
Said Mr Grantham: " When we have a dry sunny spell such as we have at the moment, we do not expect the storm sewage overflows to be operating. We do not expect such high levels of bacteria to be coming down streams and rivers. The results we have had so far this year have not given us any surprises. They have not identified any problem areas we did not know existed, and we have plans for improvements at all of these sites."