New beach water rules: Enough to make you sick
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - 09:01
in Earth & Climate
The Beach Act of 2000 gave the EPA a chance to vastly improve protection of the nation's swimmers and surfers from pathogen-caused illnesses — an opportunity that seems about to be wasted.When Congress approved the Beach Act in 2000, I was hopeful. The law required the Environmental Protection Agency to develop federal standards for water quality that would protect beach users from pathogen-caused illnesses, and it called for modernizing an outdated approach to measuring beach water quality. I believed it had the potential to make beaches far safer for the nation's swimmers and surfers.