Steve Mentz

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Water Notes 2: June 2023

June 8, 2023 by Steve Mentz

Just to keep everyone updated as we come into the swimming season. The recent dry weather has meant that the Water Quality project has not been able to get too much information in later May. After we collected two rounds in late April/early May there was not enough rain on a weekday (when the samples can be delivered to the state lab) for outfall sampling. We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks!

June 8 – World Oceans Day – with haze from Canadian wildfires

(Also – we don’t have any preliminary results yet- the first two sets of samples are currently being preserved at the state lab. Once we have more rounds we’ll send a batch out together for MST testing.)

After this horrible smoke clears out, the start of swim season usually brings warmer temperatures and more people (and dogs) outside, so bacteria counts will likely go up in the coming weeks (as they do every year). The health department has begun regular beach sampling at Short Beach, and the beach is being monitored for unsafe conditions. There has been some talk this spring about pollen in the water and other visual indicators; these are not bacterial dangers to swimmers. The beach is open because it meets the CT water criteria in its regular testing, and we don’t want our study to cause undue concern!

That being said, one thing we dog people can can do to help protect water quality is to remove dog waste from the areas around the outfalls and the beach. Especially if the green garbage bins are nearly full, as they often are in summer, it’s important not to have poop bags sitting around near the beach. It’s a pain, but I bring my dogs’ bags back up the hill to my house every day, and send them out with the weekly garbage.

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About Steve

Steve Mentz
Professor of English
St. John’s University
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