App used to report water quality in North Carolina could have been useful at Paris games
By Will Atwater
Last week, sports lovers around the world cringed as they watched Olympic triathletes dive into Paris’ Seine River for the swimming leg of the three-sport event — even though many still questioned the quality of the river that flows through the City of Light. Those fears seemed to be confirmed when, over the weekend, the Belgian Olympic Committee announced it would withdraw from this week’s mixed relay triathlon because one of their athletes last week fell sick after her swim.
The problem: bacteria levels in the Seine. The river has long been on the receiving end of sewage emissions and runoff from agricultural and urban areas, and quality remains an issue despite the French government’s efforts to clean it up.
High bacteria counts and water quality problems are familiar in North Carolina, too, where parts of North Carolina’s French Broad River near Asheville and Wolf Pit Branch (a prong of Havelock’s Slocum Creek that feeds into the Neuse River) have recently made headlines for similar reasons.
All those waterways were deemed unsafe for swimming because contaminant levels were too high.
While pinpointing the source of high levels of bacteria in a creek or river can take time, a tool available to North Carolinians can provide information to people who want to plunge into the water for a cooling swim.
Swim Guide is an app-based program produced by Swim Drink Fish Canada, a Canadian organization that provides water quality information about beaches, rivers and other waterways across North Carolina.
The Swim Guide program “delivers free up-to-date water quality information for [more than] 10,000 beaches, lakes, rivers, and swimming holes” across 11 countries, with the assistance of 100 affiliates. It provides data on E. coli levels in freshwater areas (streams, rivers, creeks) and enterococci levels in saltwater areas (beaches), according to the organization’s website.
The organization aggregates data about water quality at hundreds of North Carolina locations.
How to get Swim Guide information:
You can download the app to your phone (available through the Apple App Store, GooglePlay)
On the website, enter your location in the search box. (You don’t need to enter the state, just type the name of the waterway.)
Iframe: https://www.theswimguide.org/find
Bacteria levels ebb and flow
It’s not uncommon for bacteria levels in waterways to fluctuate, especially during summer months when storms can create conditions that lead to poor water quality, including an influx of bacteria from stormwater runoff.
“Whenever we get rain, we typically see spikes in E. coli,” said Anna Alsobrook, the French Broad Watershed science and policy manager for Mountain True, an environmental advocacy organization based in western North Carolina.
“The impact of the rain and the flashing of all the water coming into the river stirs up the sediment on the bottom and basically recirculates any E. coli that’s already in the river’s sediment bed,” Alsobrook added. “We’re getting a new influx of bacteria with each rain event, but we’re also resuspending, within the river, the E. coli that’s already there.”
E. coli is a fecal bacteria indicator, one of many types of microbes found in the intestines of humans and warm-blooded animals. When found in high concentrations in rivers and creeks, for instance, it suggests the presence of more potentially harmful bacteria.
Alsobrook says that in western North Carolina, cattle that drink from streams and faulty sewer and septic systems that leach waste contribute to elevated bacteria levels in waterways.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that health risks related to exposure to fecal bacteria include respiratory, gastrointestinal and neurological illness, as well as diarrhea and eye, ear, and skin infections.
Alsobrook told NC Health News that the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services recommends 126 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters as safe bacteria levels for swimming. For water activities like canoeing and kayaking, where you’re less likely to come into contact with water, the recommendation is 886 CFU per 100 milliliters.
Contamination sources
People living in eastern North Carolina have unfortunately become more familiar with the problems of poor water quality during storms like Debby, which bore down on the region during this first full week of August.
But even when there are no storms, there’s a risk for contamination.
Recently, the causes of the high levels of bacteria found in Slocum Creek could stem from several sources, including wildlife, aging wastewater and stormwater systems, and agriculture operations, said UNC Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences researcher Rachel Noble.
However, she urges patience when trying to identify the contamination source.
“If you focus your attention only on the fecal bacteria numbers and knowing that they’re high, and then you try to develop some sort of strategy to mitigate the source, without knowing what the source is, you can do three things,” Noble said. “You can waste resources, you can scapegoat someone or something as being the problem when you don’t know for sure that’s the case, and [you can] miss the opportunity to control something that could have been easily fixed.”
How it works
Neuse River waterkeeper and Sound Rivers‘ Director of Advocacy Samantha Krop recently told NC Health News that the Swim Guide is a useful tool for sharing water quality information with the public.
“We’ve been sampling the west prong of Slocum Creek for years and as part of our Swim Guide program,” Krop said. “The reason is because the west prong is where there is a wildlife boat ramp, and it’s also where there is a community park, which now has a kayak rental facility.”
Several North Carolina Riverkeeper organizations, such as Mountain True, Haw River Assembly, Catawba, Sound Rivers, Cape Fear River Watch and Yadkin, take weekly water samples and produce a water quality report that’s available to the public. The information is posted weekly from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Swim Guide water quality data is available to the public through a participating organization’s website, an e-newsletter and the outlet’s social media page. Information can also be accessed through text messages and the Swim Guide’s website.
In the wake of a storm like Debby, it will be valuable in helping the public know when it’s safe to go back into the water.
Alsobrook said participating in the Swim Guide program benefits Mountain True and the public.
“We use the data behind the scenes to help us strategize follow-up sampling. When we see a site that might fail for a few weeks in a row, and it’s significant, we’ll go out and we’ll do follow up sampling to try to bracket the source,” Alsobrook said.
“We’ve been able to find several sewer leaks and septic issues from doing that kind of work,” she added. “So, you know, on the front end, it’s about educating the public where they can go swim. But on the back end, we’re using it to help clean up the river too.
”It’s a cool resource for both reasons.”
The post App used to report water quality in North Carolina could have been useful at Paris games appeared first on North Carolina Health News.
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