A startling report from Environment America claims that excrement and sewage are contaminating more than half of New York City’s beaches.
The organization discovered that 57% of the 344 state beaches it studied in 2022 had at least one day of “fecal contamination” that may have been dangerous, exceeding the EPA’s standard for recommendations and closures. Factory farms, industrial livestock operations, and sewage overflows are to blame for the pollution on the shores of the Empire State, according to the environmental group.
Data made available by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which monitors water quality and issues advisories, show that just one city-owned public beach was closed in 2022 because of poor water quality.
In Staten Island’s Wolfe’s Pond Park, the water was deemed unfit for swimming on six occasions, and warnings for “Enterococci Exceedance” – hazardous levels of bacteria suggesting the presence of human feces — were given on a further 43 occasions.
The Bronx’s Orchard Beach exhibited warnings on nine days, Staten Island’s Midland Beach and Cedar Grove Beach displayed warnings on two days, and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn received warnings on 20 days when bacteria levels were too high.
One in four Americans use private septic tanks, and the environmental group’s research made a point of stressing that the majority of contaminations it had observed were in the form of animal waste from industrial farms that is washed into the seas and excrement from sewers.
In 2022, more than 3,100 beaches around the country were examined, and the research concluded that on at least one day, “fecal contamination” levels might have been dangerous.
