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Monitoring City Beaches

by Sam Williams
Jul 2004

A city employee by day, Jim Scarcella begins his second life as a volunteer  beach monitor the moment he reaches his Midland Beach home on Staten  Island. At least once a week, you'll find him patrolling the local  sand, picking up trash and filling out litter surveys for the  Department of Environmental Protection.

"You name it, I've probably found it on the beach," says Scarcella with  a laugh.

Scarcella, who also happens to serve as the head of the Natural  Resource Preservation Association, a New York City group dedicated to  improving the aquatic environment, knows that not everybody shares his  zeal. Still, he is happy to report some notable signs of progress. Gone  are some of the problems of the past , the algae blooms that shut down city beaches in 1976 and the  medical waste scares that kept bathers away in 1987.  Barring the  occasional bacteria advisory from the city Department of Health and  Mental Hygiene, things are good and getting better, at least from the  perspective of a guy who first started volunteering in 1990.

"I think we're making strides," Scarcella says. "I'm fortunate in that  I like doing this, though. I went to the beach today with my son and  his friend and picked up another 30 pounds of litter."

In a city with few environmental success stories, the improving state  of local beaches is worth celebrating, if not too loudly. Sure, the city, state and  federal agencies that oversee water safety have had their occasional  differences. In a recent issue New York magazine article, for  example, representatives from the mayor's office grumbled about the new  EPA bacteria standards -- standards which went into effect this April  and which  force the city to test for enterococci, a class of pathogens  that thrives in untreated animal feces. Still,when you compare water  and beach monitoring with other hot-button issues such as national air pollution standards and World Trade Center toxic sampling, the level of inter-agency  cooperation is striking.

"It's a priority," says Helen Grebe, head of the Environmental  Protection Agency's regional coastal monitoring program, one of at  least five local agencies looking to reduce beach pollution. "People  want to preserve the region's reputation as a place that still remains in  close contact with the water. That's hard to do when you're closing  beaches."

For Grebe, keeping the region's reputation in tact means sending out  regular helicopter sorties up and down the coast. Each morning, her New  Jersey-based monitoring team performs an aerial survey from Cape May to  the east end of Long Island, for "floatables" -- waterborne litter --  and oil slicks. If her team finds anything, they quickly report the  sighting and location to aquatic cleanup crews.

In New York State, reports of oil are given to the U.S. Coast Guard and floatable pollution to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Within New York City waterways,  the city's own Department of Environmental Protection, operating under  its dual authority as guardian of the city's incoming water and chief  guarantor of outgoing wastewater quality, has its own fleet of "trash  skimmer" boats. Circling the harbor, Jamaica Bay and other, smaller  waterways, these funnel-shaped craft vacuum up trash before it gets a  chance to reach the beach.

The three-level defense, while effective, is still far from perfect. Like most American cities, New York employs a combined sewer  and wastewater treatment system. That means the rainwater hitting  streets and the sewage exiting bathrooms both head for the same place:  underground catchment basins that serve as a channel to the city's 14  water pollution control plants. According to the Department of  Environmental Protection, however, the city's water treatment system is  currently equipped to treat only 40 percent of city rainwater. To keep  the remaining 60 percent from overloading the system, the city employs  combined sewage overflows, essentialy giant underground bathtubs that  dump their excess contents directly into local waterways in the event  of a major storm or flood. Because floatable pollutants rise to the top  and exit the quickest, the clearest indication that local sewers have  hit their maximum capacity is the number of plastic items bobbing on the  surface of local waterways in the wake of summer storms.

To curb this problem, the Department of Environmental Protection has  installed numerous hoods and nets to keep floatables trapped. It has  also relied heavily on the six-year-old beach monitor program.

As a member of that program, Scarcella lays out the duties: Volunteers  must visit their assigned beach once a week within two hours of high  tide. Equipped with stakes and rope, they map out a 200 foot stretch of  beach parallel to the shore and count the number of items deposited  just below the high water mark. Using a survey sheet provided by the  department, volunteers keep track of how many plastic, paper and  styrofoam floatables fall within their survey zone. They also take note  of living and dead animals in the vicinity and fax the survey results  to Robert Gans, program manager for the Department of Environmental  Protection's Volunteer Beach Floatable Survey .

"Last year we did a comparsion of 24 beaches," says Gans. "We saw  significant increases in waterfowl and fish, which we're taking as a  sign of increased water quality and clarity. And we saw significant  decreases in plastics and very little medical waste noted."

Gans says he hopes to up the number of monitored beaches to 30 this  summer. He also expects to see the number of reported floatables  decrease. The spring relaunch of citywide plastic recycling should  reduce the number of plastic bottles and bottle caps finding their way  into city sewers, he says.

More importantly, the Department of Environmental Protection's own  ongoing efforts to upgrade city pollution facilities are starting to  pay off in increased water clarity, which is in turn drawing more  visitors to the beach. Like many in the beach clean-up game, Gans sees  anything that gets New Yorkers to view the local coastline as a  recreational destination as opposed to a neglected dumping ground as a  "win/win."

Not all volunteers share the same level of optimism, however. Ida  Sanoff, a beach monitor in Brighton Beach, says the water at her  favorite beach is the cleanest she's ever seen it. Still, it's the  growing number of cigarette butts above the tideline that has her  concerned.

"People don't realize that clean streets equal clean beaches," she  says. "Now with everybody standing outside restaurants and smoking, I  can see that that's going to get worse."

Whether or not last year's smoking ban has led directly to more  cigarette butts on the beach, one thing is for sure: Cigarette butts  are the predominant, individual component of floatable litter. Last  September, the American Littoral Society sponsored its annual beach  cleanup. After pulling in 334,000 pounds of trash (of which New York City  accounted for 152,000) and 220,000 items, volunteers sampled the  resulting contents. Their findings:  Cigarette litter accounted for 18  percent of all items collected.

Such data highlight the limits of litter policing.  To stem the problem  at the source, the Department of Environmental Protection has taken to  sponsoring a "Clean Streets/Clean Beaches" program with the  Metropolitan Transit Authority. The program runs ads on city trains  reminding New Yorkers that sidewalk litter often goes directly into  local waterways. Still, the message doesn't always go through.

"A volunter can count so many cigarette butts it's unbelievable," says  Gans, acknowledging the problem. "If they're really diligent about it,  they can get up to 150, 160 and still be counting."

Fortunately, many of the volunteers who help the city patrol its  coastline are the same people helping to bolster its educational  efforts. Joel Banslaben is chairman of the Surfrider Foundation of New  York City. He says his organization is planning to launch a storm drain  stenciling program.  Modeled on successful efforts in California and  around Maryland's Chesapeake Bay, the program spray paints "drains to  bay" advisories directly onto stormwater basins and city culverts,  explicitly reminding passersby that whatever they drop in the gutter  might be waiting for them the next time they visit Coney Island or  Orchard Beach. Another Surfrider education program already experiencing success is the  Respect the Beach program, which brings school-age children from  Manhattan and Brooklyn out to the Rockaways to help with  Clean-up, learn about stormwater runoff and finish the two day camp  taking surf lessons.

"You need to establish programs that lead people to treat  the water with the respect it deserves," Banslaben says. "People want to get  reconnected with the waterfront."

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