A survey of beach pollution at a seaside resort

Abstract

A series of infections with Salmonella paratyphi B which occurred at a seaside resort in North Devon every summer between 1943 and 1946 concentrated local attention on a very unsatisfactory sewage outfall, which discharged into the sea at all stages of the tide and frequently caused fouling of the adjacent beach. The local authority, concerned at the possible association between beach pollution and the enteric infections and also by the prospect of serious economic loss in an area dependent on the summer tourist traffic, planned a new sewage disposal scheme based on the controlled discharge of sewage into the sea from a point which had been shown by float tests to be more suitable than the old outfall site.After discussion with the local sanitary authority and the consulting engineers who drew up the plans for the new scheme, it was agreed that bacteriological surveys of the outfall area should be made both before and after the installation of the new scheme. The main purpose of this paper is to give the results of these surveys, the first of which was carried out in the summer of 1948 and the second in the summer of 1950, 3 months after the new scheme had come into operation. ENGINEERING AND EPIDEMIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF BEACH POLLUTIONThe problem of sewage pollution of bathing beaches is a complex one. The discharge of sewage into the sea from coastal towns is determined partly by financial considerations and partly by the lack of suitable space for sewage works in most seaside resorts. If the sewage outfall can be pushed far enough out to sea and the sewage liberated at a reasonable depth below the surface, pollution of beaches will not occur, and this method has been successfully used at several seaside towns in this country, e.g. Bournemouth and Brighton. The prolongation of outfalls for long distances under the sea is, however, both difficult and expensive, and in many coastal areas sewer outfalls discharge sewage just below or even above low-water mark. Where this occurs on a beach used for bathing, two quite distinct problems arise. One is the health hazard occasioned by the deliberate discharge of potentially pathogenic material; the other is an aesthetic problem when the amenities of the area are affected by deposition of excreta on the sands, discoloration of the sea water by 'sleek' fields and the formation of slimy deposits on the beach round the outfall. The disfiguration of a popular beach by sewage may discourage summer visitors, and active local authorities are justified even on economic grounds in planning sewage disposal schemes which minimize the pollution of their beaches.If this problem is approached on frankly aesthetic grounds, it should be possible to set a maximum permitted level of sea water contamination on a bathing beach below which a sewage nuisance is very unlikely, and plans for an adequate sewage

Modeling In- Stream Escherichia coli Concentrations

“…A review study on pathogen contamination by Rudolfs et al (1950) provided an excellent summary of early work on the occurrence and survival of pathogenic bacteria in soil, water, sewage sludge and vegetation. Moore (1954) carried out a bacteriological survey of beach pollution in the summer of 1948 and 1950, and discovered that the sewer system was a primary source of coliform organisms in the sea water. Many other notable studies such as the studies on sewage contamination for coastal bathing waters in England and Wales (The Committee on Bathing Beach Contamination of the Public Health Laboratory, 1959) also described the potential health risks caused by pathogens in the coastal environment.…”

“…As in this study our primary focus was to develop model for predicting E. coli resuspension, the parameter values governing overland transport were obtained from previous work. The works of Parajuli et al (2009a;b), Coffey et al (2010), and Kim et al…”

“…(2010) described the range of these parameter values. The bacteria partition coefficient (BACTKDDB), which partitions deposited bacteria between soil solution and soil solids was set to 0.36 as proposed by , while Parajuli et al (2009a;b) used BACTKDDB of 0.9. The default value of percolation coefficient (BACTMIX) of 10, and fraction of manure applied to land areas that has active organisms (BACT_SWF) of 0.97 were used.…”

“…Although agricultural activities, such as manure application and effluent discharges from CAFOs, have the potential to play a major role in influencing stream water quality, the characteristics of the watershed (i.e., land cover, soils, geology, topographic features and catchment hydrology) also play a key role in determining stream water quality (Rothwell et al, 2010a;b). While assessing environmental conditions, many previous studies have explored new methods to identify representative input parameters, which can be useful to predict stream water quality (Zhao et al, 2006;Wu and Chau, 2006;Xie et al, 2006;Zhang and Chau, 2009;Chau et al, 2002;Muttil and Chau, 2007).…”

“…Jarvie et al, 2002;Tiner, 2004, King et al, 2005bBach et al, 2010;Shiels and Guebert, 2011;Zhang and Huang, 2011). Land cover indexes have been shown to be particularly useful for explaining and predicting spatial variation in waters impaired by nitrate, pH, orthophosphate, suspended sediments, and metals (Roth et al, 1996;Robson and Neal, 1997;Gergel et al, 2002;Buck et al, 2004;Kearns et al, 2005;Aitkenhead-Peterson et al, 2007;Evans et al, 2006;Helliwell et al, 2007;Meynendonckx et al, 2006;Rothwell et al, 2010a;b). While previous studies have investigated linkages between the landscape and in-stream water chemistry using the watershed characteristics approach (Rothwell et al, 2010a;b;Shiels and Guebert, 2011), relationships between landuse and water pathogen levels need further examination to understand how landcover (i.e., cropping land, undisturbed land cover, and disturbed land cover) potentially impacts in-stream pathogen concentrations.…”