Aug 4 - Pollution Prompts Record Beach Closures

The Natural Resource Defense Council released their annual report on water quality at U.S. beaches that reveals health warnings and beach closings was up from 2005, eith six alone in Orange County. Elisabeth Leamy of ABC News also reports that the NRDC plans to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to improve monitoring standards for beaches as required by law.

From sea to shining sea, beaches across the country are facing a rising tide of dangerous pollution.

In Port Angeles, Wash., toilet paper floated in the harbor and 30 miles of beach closed after the city's main sewer pipe broke.

A worker testing the water said, "This is raw sewage — it has the usual fecal coliform and bacterias and things like that."

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NRDC Study, Testing the Waters 2006

Waterways can become easily polluted through runoffs that can carry trash from land into streams and oceans. CAW has been working on getting pollution away from our oceans, including CAW sponsored AB 1940 (Koretz), creating a multiagency taskforce to implement a state plan addressing marine debris.

What You Can Do

Lanh Nguyen