Beach closures puzzle officials
Source of E. coli could be birds
By JENNIFER PRITCHETT
When Kingston had its first beach closure in 14 years in 2006, health officials said it was unusual and nothing alarming.
Over the past two summers, however, closures have become more frequent with five beaches posted unsafe for swimming so far this year: Lake Ontario Park, Arrowhead Beach at CFB Kingston, Rotary Park, Crerar Beach in Reddendale and Big Sandy Bay on Wolfe Island.
Health and municipal officials are unable to say definitively what's causing the E. coli contamination.
"To have five beaches closed this year is more than usual," said Dr. Ian Gemmill, the district's medical officer
of health. He said some of
the closures are happening at beaches in bays where there isn't a huge influx of water to wash away bacteria, the most likely source of which is bird excrement.
"Our best assessment is probably the presence of waterfowl," Gemmill said.
District health authorities around the province are responsible for monitoring water quality at public beaches where people swim and at waterfront areas that might impact those beaches.
They collect water samples as often as once a week to check that bacteria levels don't surpass the province's accepted limit of 100 parts E. coli per 100 millilitres of water. If elevated levels of the bacteria are found, the area is tested again a couple of days later.
Beaches are typically closed for swimming after two sets of tests reveal elevated bacteria levels.
District health units aren't responsible for finding the source of the contamination or to clean it up.
"We don't do any remediation - our job is to advise [the people in charge of the beaches]," said Gemmill.
Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Public Health tests beach-water quality in as many as 50 locations in Kingston, as well as in areas in North, Central and South Frontenac townships, Napanee, Stone Mills, Loyalist Township and Frontenac Islands.
Kingston has had the biggest problem with postings this year. In fact, swimming holes at Rotary Park and Crerar Beach remain closed.
Gemmill said there is no evidence to suggest the contamination is coming from a sewer pipe. The contaminated beaches are located both in the city's east and west ends.
While rainfall can also be a factor in beach closures, Gemmill said there doesn't appear to be any correlation with the elevated bacteria levels this summer.
However, the amount of rainfall for the first 10 days of July (15 millimetres) surpassed the amount of rain for the entire month of July last year, said Jim Keech, president and chief executive officer for Utilities Kingston.
"It has been wetter and there have been some significant rainfalls," he said.
Rainfall has been linked to elevated
E. coli levels because heavy rain can force municipalities with out-of-date sewer pipes to spew raw sewage into waterways because the pipes become overloaded.
In Kingston, the long-time practice known as bypassing was largely to blame for poor water quality at city beaches in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, in the past five years, the city has spent millions on sewer infrastructure to significantly decrease the amount of waste it spews into the lake.
"That perception still seems to be out there [as the cause of these closures] and we don't seem to be able to get rid of that," said Keech.
He doesn't believe the beach closures this summer are related to several sewage bypasses that have occurred in late June and early July.
"We've had a couple of small bypasses -one on July 6 and another on July 9 -but they're not significant," said Keech. There were also bypasses on June 29 and July 9.
"I don't think [the beach closures] could be the result of bypasses as we haven't had any major ones," Keech said, adding the health unit would have contacted Utilities Kingston if bypasses were suspected as the cause.
"I haven't talked to anyone from the health unit in ages," said Keech.
Gemmill said it isn't district health's mandate to investigate the cause of the
E. coli contamination. That responsibility, he says, lies with the Ministry of the Environment.
For that level of government to become involved, public health would have to call officials there and urge them to investigate the suspected source.
That hasn't happened.
"If we thought we had a major problem where there was a major source of contamination that was continuing, clearly we would let the Ministry of the Environment know," said Gemmill.
"I would say what we're experiencing this year is more frequent, what I would call low-level insults to the water that are pretty routine. There's just more of them."
When a beach is about to be posted, district health notifies the City of Kingston.
Ministry of the Environment spokesman Michel Finn said the government department would only get involved if there was an "obvious source of the bacterial contamination."
"If there was sewage discharged from the sewer system, we would be working with the municipality to go at the source," he said. "If the beach closure was coming from a source regulated by the ministry, we would be involved."
Finn said the ministry hasn't had any involvement in the beach closures in Kingston this summer.
Gemmill said the illnesses people suffer if they've ingested contaminated water "tend to be minor" and can include eye and ear infections, skin infections, as well as gastrointestinal problems.
"It's like any other inspection we do, he said. "We can't ensure there is no risk at any given time, but we do our best to ensure the risk is kept to the minimum possible level."