BEACHNET==> Please join us in protecting the health of your favorite beach!

Contamination leading to beach advisories and threats to public health continues to be a concern in the Great Lakes Basin. The Great Lakes Regional Collaboration’s (GLRC) Executive Committee has approved the development of a Great Lakes Beach Initiative to help implement the GLRC Strategy, the widely accepted blueprint for Great Lakes restoration. The GLRC Strategy identifies coastal health as a challenge, recognizes the significance of beaches to the economic well-being, health and quality of life of the region’s citizens, and calls for the identification of sources of contamination and remediation. The use of sanitary survey tools is a way to achieve these goals. As a result, the GLRC Executive Committee approved the development of this Initiative for the 2008 beach season in order to broaden the use of standardized sanitary survey forms across the Great Lakes Basin.

Based on GLRC Strategy recommendations, and in response to data collected from the Great Lakes states which found that 90% of their beach advisories and closings were from unknown sources, U.S. EPA and federal, state and local beach program partners developed standardized beach sanitary survey forms in 2007. These forms assist beach managers with a consistent approach to identify pollution sources, share information, and plan source remediation. The forms were successfully piloted by 61 Great Lakes beaches during the 2007 beach season, through EPA funding. Based on the results of the pilot program, many beach managers recommended remediation actions to help achieve clean and safe beach water quality, such as better beach management efforts like removing fecal material, raking, grooming, collecting trash, and removing algae.

In order to achieve a regional standard of clean and safe beaches, beach managers across the region are encouraged to use the standard sanitary survey forms. These forms are attached to this email for your use (a routine form which can be filled out each time sampling is done, a methods form to keep track of methods used to fill out the routine form, and an annual form). A draft user manual will be sent to you shortly for your reference, to be followed by a final version in the coming months. These materials will also be made available for download in the near future at www.glrc.us/initiatives/beaches/index.html. At this site, you will also be able to find links to helpful resources for the sanitary survey forms, predictive modeling information, state monitoring programs, and other beach management resources. Use of the sanitary survey forms and other available resources will get the region closer to clean, safe beaches!

A formal announcement of this regional effort will be made on May 30^th by GLRC partners in Racine, WI. We’d like to highlight success of this effort at the formal announcement. If you plan to start using the sanitary survey forms at your beach, please contact Melissa Soline at melissa.soline@glslcities.org and let her know before May 30^th.

Please join us in protecting the health of your favorite beach!

Thank you!

Julie Kinzelman, Ph.D., MT (ASCP)

Research Scientist/Lab Director

City of Racine Health Department

730 Washington Avenue

Racine, WI 53403

PH 262-636-9501

FX 262-636-9576

julie.kinzelman@cityofracine.org

"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible - Soren Kierkegaard