Transcript: Understanding Beach Closures in Rhode Island
CLARICE: Hello, everybody. And welcome to this week’s episode of Environmentally Speaking.
MARISA: Hi, everybody. I’m Attorney Marisa Desautel. I do some environmental law stuff with my life and I’m laughing because Clarice just gave the old like proper three, two, one and then started talking like we’re professionals.
CLARICE: Every once in a while I need to count myself down. I either count down or I have a giggle fit, so is some behind the scenes.
MARISA: All right. So today the topic that we’re tackling is something that is timely. We’re tackling a timely topic because this time of year folks going to the beach are numerous and it’s a little confusing.
CLARICE: [inaudible].
MARISA: Yeah. Me, too. It’s a little confusing. Rhode Island is known as the Ocean State. There are many beaches and it’s difficult to understand why some beaches are closed and others are not and why. What’s your experience been with Rhode Island beaches being closed?
CLARICE: So the only thing I — my kind of big memory of beaches being closed — one is a memory of it and I always remember people saying, oh, it’s red tide. That sort of, oh, we can’t go to the beach because of red tide. And I just remember it being a seaweed problem.
MARISA: Okay.
CLARICE: You know, sometimes it is smellier than normal, so you don’t want to go. It’s not necessarily closed. Or there’s so much seaweed that you can’t really go and enjoy the water.
MARISA: Yeah. Okay.
CLARICE: But when you presented this topic and I started doing a little bit of reading, that’s not what I’m seeing. And I don’t know. Maybe my memory of it is different than what it is today, or maybe what we’re seeing today is different than what it was when I was a child.
MARISA: Well, definitely I think both. Rhode Island, as I mentioned, is the Ocean State. Did you know that we have 400 miles of coastline here in Rhode Island? That’s a lot.
CLARICE: Is it sad that I’m shocked Rhode Island is 400 miles long?
MARISA: Yeah. I mean, it takes an hour to get from north to south, see it is — it impressive.
CLARICE: Yeah.
MARISA: There are two islands, so that adds to the [inaudible].
CLARICE: Okay. That helps.
MARISA: But this year has seen a record number of beach closure days. In the past the average number of beach closure days has been around 100. There have been 205 this summer —
CLARICE: Whoa.
MARISA: — to date. Today is August 9, so we’ve still got another month of summer and we’re already at 205 days.
[0:03:00] CLARICE: Whoa. That’s a lot of days.
MARISA: Yeah. Yeah. And the reason for closures this year is a result of weather extremes that we’ve talked about in other podcast episodes including higher than normal rainfall and warmer than normal ocean temperatures. The month of July was the second wettest month on record for the state of Rhode Island recording more than five and a half inches of rain above normal.
CLARICE: That’s a lot of rain.
MARISA: It’s a lot of rain. And you wouldn’t think that extreme rainfall would result in beach closures, but as it turns out there is direct corollary between a lot of rainfall and pollution making its way into the ocean. Have you ever heard the expression the solution to pollution is dilution?
CLARICE: No. I love an alliteration. It’s not an alliteration, but it feels close.
MARISA: It feels pretty good saying it.
CLARICE: I like it. Tell me more.
MARISA: And it’s wrong. You would think that stormwater entering the ocean would not have an impact because once water combines any pollution entering the water body is diluted.
CLARICE: Oh, yeah. No.
MARISA: The principal is wrong for many different reasons. And clearly as the number of beach closures indicate for this year, increased rainfall results in beach closure and the solution to pollution is not dilution in 2023 and it never was.
CLARICE: Well, hold on. We have to unpack that idea in this context a little bit more because diluting polluted rainwater by putting it in the ocean — just that sentence alone, no. No.
MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: Maybe taking a polluted — I don’t know. The idea of cleaning up a polluted substance in some other contained way, sure. I could see like when you’re cleaning a stain you dilute the stain by putting it in a bucket of clean water, but you don’t throw it in with all of your other clean clothes. You separate it and delude that stain separately. You don’t throw it in with all of your clean clothes. Way different.
MARISA: Yeah. And it doesn’t actually work. So that principal aside for just a second, let’s talk about why these beach closures are happening, like what the pollutant of concern is and why you should care.
CLARICE: Yeah. I kept seeing bacteria.
MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: How vague is that?
[0:06:00] MARISA: It’s fairly vague and the reason that the state reports beach closures and indicates that it’s a result of bacteria is because — and this is not meant in any kind of condescending way, but most people don’t know one bacteria from another. So indicating, hey, it’s gram negative this or fecal coliform bacteria — I mean, the word fecal is probably a little more — people know it than other phrases.
CLARICE: Yeah.
MARISA: But the state just says bacteria —
CLARICE: Yeah.
MARISA: — because everyone knows what that means.
CLARICE: Okay.
MARISA: But if you want to get specific — and I think we should — the bacteria that most often makes its way into a water body that results in a closure is human waste. It is fecal coliform. It’s excreted from the human body.
CLARICE: Oh.
MARISA: And a lot of beach closures can be the result of something called a wastewater treatment system upset.
CLARICE: Yeah. I am upset.
MARISA: And to be it sounds like an upset. It’s almost like, I don’t know, like a baby that needs to be burped. Like it’s a little upset.
CLARICE: We talked about this before. This is like that downplay mitigation language.
MARISA: Yes. Yes. It’s the same thing. An upset, it’s a passive word. But a wastewater treatment system discharge requires a very active human component where you’ve got — not naming any wastewater treatment facilities, but there are humans that are running the daily operations of these wastewater treatment plants and if they’re not being done properly then discharges occur. Now, granted, combined sewer overflows can also result in an upset and that does not necessarily occur as a result of human error. Sometimes there is such a deluge of rainfall and stormwater that the combined sewer systems or the wastewater treatment plant just can’t handle it.
CLARICE: Going back to that extra five inches of rainwater that you were talking about.
MARISA: Uh-huh. Yeah. So there are instances where there’s not a human element, but in my experience when there is a beach closure so that people can’t swim and they can’t collect shellfish and consume it is because of a wastewater treatment discharge. It’s a very concentrated plume of untreated or insufficiently treated human wastewater that is discharged directly to a water of the state. And the Department of Environmental Management will go out and test a particular area, test shellfish, test the water itself and declare when an area needs to be closed because the shellfish is polluted, or the water itself is so contaminated with bacteria that humans should not be in contact with it.
[0:09:23] CLARICE: Oh, so that’s when they go out and they just basically declare [inaudible] beach until further notice.
MARISA: Yeah. Yeah.
CLARICE: Oh, gross. Well, so how do we get past this? How do we get to a point where the beach can be opened up again? Is it just time? Is there something else that’s done in between? Is it like a pool? Can they put in some organic version of shock?
MARISA: Shock the heck out of the bay, yeah. I’m sure that would go well. Well, so the short answer is no.
CLARICE: Oh.
MARISA: We cannot shock a particular area. The longer answer is I am not a shellfish biologist, so I don’t know what the parameters are to allow for human consumption of shellfish. I imagine it has to do with an ongoing shellfish survey and continued sampling and a demonstration to the state that shellfish — I imagine it’s on an average — can be consumed. Or maybe it’s an entire population has to be deemed non-polluted in order for humans to consume. I don’t know. I don’t know. All I know is the DEM will go out and make a declaration about when an area is closed to swimming and shellfishing.
CLARICE: And I’m imagining there are separate standards for the shellfish and swimming and it’s not the same standard for each.
MARISA: That’s right.
CLARICE: Well, now you know why your local beach is closed, folks.
MARISA: It’s so bad in Rhode Island and the reason that I wanted to talk about it this week is because there are several camps that are closed as a result of the types of conditions that we’re talking about. In particular, Camp Hoffman that I went to as a kid a bazillion years ago is and has been closed for, I think, almost the entire summer season. I don’t know if it’s going to be reopened, but it’s closed now.
CLARICE: That’s it. Yeah. We’ll share in our show notes — I have Health.RI.gov, their database of, it looks like, not all the beaches but the major beaches and their list of closures, so you can check on this site to see if your local beach is up. And it looks like on their site, too, they have beach closures per year and they have a graph up from 2000 to 2022 of when the most closures have been and they’ve been tracking that. Guess which year has the most beach closures.
[0:12:09] MARISA: Besides this year?
CLARICE: No. This year is not even the most.
MARISA: What?
CLARICE: Yeah.
MARISA: What is it?
CLARICE: 2003, 503 days.
MARISA: Did we have a lot of rainfall that year? Does it say?
CLARICE: No. Not even the most rain. Not sure what happened in that year, but this year looks like we’ve had more rain. There must have been some event. There had to have been some event because it is a staggeringly high number compared to the other years.
MARISA: What was it, 500, you said?
CLARICE: 503.
MARISA: Compared to 205 this year? Well, now I feel like —
CLARICE: This year is not up yet, so the last recorded is 2022 with 169.
MARISA: Okay.
CLARICE: So next year —
MARISA: We’re at 205 right now. Presumably that number is going to go up, but still that’s not even half of what it was in 2003. It’s still not good.
CLARICE: It’s not great.
MARISA: [inaudible]. It’s not good.
CLARICE: Yeah. It’s not great at all. So if any of our listeners are a shellfish biologist, let us know. I want to know what’s going on with the shellfish.
MARISA: Yeah. I’m curious about what the guideposts are there. What needs to be demonstrated in order for that area to be reopened.
CLARICE: Yeah. And you can let us know at info@DesautelBrowning.com. You can hit us up on the socials at Desautel Browning on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. You can watch our videos up on YouTube. Feel free to like, comment, subscribe. I haven’t said that in a really long time. And as we’re recording this, it is not yet our joint birthday, so happy birthday, Marisa.
MARISA: Happy birthday, Clarice.
CLARICE: And thank you, everybody, for listening.
MARISA: Thanks, everyone.
