Water Quality of Beaches
Yesterday, the Seattle Times wrote an article about the bacteria level at swimming beaches in the area. While the article focuses on how little is known and how inconsistent the quality standards are, there were a few paragraphs that jumped out to me as signalling lawsuit potential. If someone were ever to get sick swimming places the Times mentions, these paragraphs would be cited in the by the plaintiff’s lawyers:
But in Snohomish County, no one does check consistently. Yet, according to a handful of tests done by the state, Silver Lake was so polluted on several occasions last year that if it were located in some other counties, it would have been closed.
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Silver Lake is one of a handful of Puget Sound swimming areas that show signs of chronic pollution that could send swimmers home with a bad case of diarrhea.
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In Snohomish County, it’s been years since a beach was closed to swimming. But that’s not to say the water is unusually pristine.
In fact, a state study in 2004 found two lakes — Silver Lake and Lake Ballinger — with bacteria levels well above federal guidelines.
The county’s health district stopped routine monitoring of swimming beaches in 1999 because the tests were too costly and provided little useful information, said Bob Pekich, director of environmental health for Snohomish County’s health district.
“What does it tell you? I don’t know,” Pekich said of the problems with the tests. “We couldn’t even find complete and standard information on what threshold to use.”
Pekich said he wasn’t aware of problems at the two lakes.
Read the whole story and check out your beach.
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