Beach closures were down this year. What does that say about RI's water quality?

PROVIDENCE – There was some good news for swimmers in the Ocean State with the recent release of data showing that beach closures were down dramatically this year from last year’s number, which was the highest in more than a decade.

Does that mean that water quality around Rhode Island has suddenly taken a turn for the better, or is the drop-off just the result of natural variability?

Probably the latter, said Jillian Chopy, beach program manager with the Rhode Island Department of Health.

“Unfortunately, it is a bit of a roller coaster ride,” she said.

That doesn’t mean that all the work to clean up the waters in Narragansett Bay and elsewhere around the state in recent decades hasn’t had an impact. Those efforts have certainly helped prevent the number of closures from being higher.

In addition, improvements in the Health Department’s testing system this year also appear to have had an effect on reducing the amount of time of any given closure.

But it’s difficult to glean long-term trends in the beach closure data. When you graph the numbers over the last 20-plus years, the line swings up and down on an almost annual basis.

Last year was unusually high with 246 closure days during the beach season between Memorial Day and Labor Day, but in 2006 there were 100 more closure days and in 2003 the total was twice as high.

And while the 71 closure days this year is pretty low, there were even lower numbers in 2005, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2020.

So while Chopy is encouraged by this year’s number, she also can’t really say if it bodes well for the future.

“It’s hard to say what next year will look like,” she said.

Rainfall is key when it comes to beach closures

If there’s a single variable that holds more sway over closures than any other, it’s rainfall.

During heavy rains, runoff washes animal waste, garbage and other contaminants into waterways that can spike bacteria levels.

The problem is exacerbated in places like the greater Providence metro area and Newport with older sewer systems that also capture stormwater and where increased loads can cause overflows that may contain untreated sewage.

The Health Department determines whether a beach is safe for swimming or not based on levels in the water of enterococci, a type of bacteria that’s present in the guts of warm-blooded animals.

While these bacteria can cause gastroenteritis and pose a risk to immuno-compromised people, they are usually harmless to humans. They are, however, seen as indicators of the presence of more dangerous organisms that can be found in sewage, including the bacteria that cause cholera, dysentery or typhoid.

Waters with levels of enterococci above 60 colony-forming units are considered unsafe for swimming, according to state regulations.

Generally, when a lot of rain falls during the beach season, closures go up. That helps explain why last year’s number of closures were so high. The 16.1-inch total was among the highest amounts of rainfall for the period on record since 2000.

But this year’s total was down only a small amount, to 14.9 inches, which highlights the importance of how the rain falls. If it’s frequent and light, it’s not a problem. But if it comes during cloudbursts, which are becoming more frequent because of climate change, it will overwhelm infrastructure systems and taint local waters.

It all depends on the timing of the rain.

“If you have, say, five inches in a month spread out over the entire month, that’s not going to have the same impact as a couple of really big storms in that month, and you have that first flush of pollutants that goes out into our waterbodies,” said Jed Thorp, director of advocacy for Save The Bay, which carries out its own water quality testing.

This summer, with fewer big rainstorms, the timing was on the side of beach-goers.

More: The quahog holds a dear place in RI’s culture. Could its days be numbered?

Sewer improvements also have a big impact

Weather may be the critical factor when it comes to beach closures, but human intervention still plays a big role in water quality.

Nothing demonstrates that more than the impact of an enormous tunnel network being built by the Narragansett Bay Commission to control combined sewer overflows from the largest wastewater treatment system in Rhode Island.

In 2015, after the first two phases of the project, including a 3-mile tunnel under Providence, were completed, water testing by the commission found that bacteria levels in the Upper Bay had dropped in half. Further improvements are expected when a 2.2-mile tunnel excavated under Pawtucket goes into operation.

The effect is especially apparent on beaches in the northern part of the Bay. In the five summers before the Providence tunnel opened in 2008, Barrington Town Beach, for example, was closed for a total of 28 days. In the last five summers, the total was six days.

Water quality in the Upper Bay has improved so much that the Health Department is working with the City of East Providence to relicense Crescent Park Beach in Riverside, a century after it closed to swimming because of contamination. It would be the northernmost licensed beach in the Bay.

A nearby beach at Sabin Point Park has also been under consideration for reopening, but problems with stormwater from the surrounding neighborhood, among other issues, have stalled the plans.

In general, the waters at the two Riverside beaches, where the Health Department tests twice a week, have seen “significant improvements,” Chopy said.

She also pointed to lower numbers of beach closures down the Bay in Warwick that suggest a project in the Bayside neighborhood to take out hundreds of cesspools and aging septic systems and connect homes to the municipal sewer system is working.

Last year, nearby Oakland Beach was closed four times for a total of 17 days, while this year it closed only once, for two days.

Thorp said it’s difficult to say if there's a direct correlation, but he’s sure of a connection.

“It’s hard to really prove it because there are so many variables, but without a doubt, when you have fewer people on poorly managed septic systems and cesspools, you’re going to have less bacteria in our coastal waterbodies,” he said.

More retests to open beaches sooner

The Health Department tests the waters at licensed beaches on a schedule that ranges from twice a week at the most popular beaches to once a month at those that are less frequented by the public. It also tests beaches after major storms.

That schedule has remained unchanged, but what has been tweaked is how the agency retests beaches after a closure is triggered. Chopy said there’s been more of an effort to retest more often and as soon as possible to keep closure times to a minimum.

So this year, the department worked with the State Health Lab in Providence and a number of private labs to test 1,404 water samples, up from 1,200 last year.

"Bacteria can get out flushed out quickly," Chopy said. "So we're testing more often; beaches didn't stay closed."

Because the Health Department only tests waters Monday to Thursday, there may be instances when the effects of some storms on water quality aren’t being captured.

In those instances, Chopy urges people to use caution and to wait 24 hours after a storm has passed, or two tide cycles, before going in the water again.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Rain, CSO, better testing: Why RI beach closures were low in 2024