New research from Chicago might help communities reduce how often their lakebeaches are closed this summer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s LesterGraham reports:
Transcript
New research from Chicago might help communities reduce how often their lake beaches
are closed this summer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
After Chicago beaches were closed to swimmers more than 120 times one
summer due to high bacteria counts, the city decided to find out why that
was happening. Richard whitman is a scientist with the US Geological
Survey. He says the cause doesn’t seem to be human sewage carried along by
the current as was once thought.
“The majority of the time it’s something local. And we
Cannot-we surely cannot rule out animal sources.”
Namely sea gulls. Researchers say they can use computers to predict when
the winds and waves will likely stir up the bird droppings and cause high
bacteria counts. Marcia Jiminez is with the chigago deaprtment of
Environment. She says now Great Lakes cities need to gather data for the
computer model.
“Where we’re all doing the same kind of testing, we’re
Sampling in the same frequency, i think that’s where we’re really going to
make a difference.”
Besides trying to predict high bacteria conditions, Chicago will also work
to discourage sea gulls by keeping beaches clear of food waste.
For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.