A new report says health-related beach closings have increased. (Photo courtesy of the EPA)
A new report says the number of beach closings in the U.S. increased last year compared to 2003. The report says the number of closings in the Great Lakes region jumped more than 60 percent. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:
Transcript
A new report says the number of beach closings in the U.S.
increased last year compared to 2003. The report says the number of
closings in the Great Lakes region jumped more than sixty percent.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:
The report by the Natural Resources Defense Council says the number of
closing or health advisory days last year was higher than ever in the
group’s fifteen years of record-keeping.
Throughout the region, there were about three thousand closing or health advisory days in 2004. They say that’s due in part to states monitoring more beaches more often, but also due to
increased sewage and stormwater runoff. Mike Shriberg heads the Michigan environmental group PIRGIM.
“Under the Clean Water Act, we should not be discharging raw or
partialy-treated sewage or, in fact, any polluted water into the U.S. What’s
happening now is we’re having a third-world solution to our sewage problems,
by allowing much raw or partially-treated sewage to flow freely into our
waters.”
The NRDC is calling for tougher enforcement of state and federal clean
water standards, and full federal funding of proposals to modernize sewage
systems along the Great Lakes and other waterways.
For the GLRC, I’m Michael Leland.