LWSC makes progress in finding beach bacteria link

LYNN – The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said the Lynn Water and Sewer Commission has made progress in finding sources of high bacteria on Kings Beach through increased and improved water quality monitoring, according to officials from both groups.”There are challenges ahead,” said DEP spokesperson Joe Ferson on Friday. “But there has been progress in identifying and addressing those areas where there’s work that needs to be done.”The comments were made after representatives from the Lynn Water and Sewer Commission and the DEP met Thursday morning to discuss plans to address high bacteria counts that have closed a portion of Kings Beach to swimming for several weeks this summer.Lynn Water and Sewer Commission Executive Director Daniel O’Neill said that he told the DEP on Thursday that the city has taken important steps to locate the potential source of contamination and keep the beach open.First, the city amended the testing protocol so that the water was sampled from the ocean rather than – as previously done – directly from the outflow pipe at Stacy Brook, which drains into Kings Beach at the Swampscott/Lynn border.”In all of the beaches in the area, the sampling protocol involves walking into three feet of (ocean) water and taking a sample one foot below the surface,” O’Neill explained. “But the (Stacy Brook) sample was from the mouth of Stacy Brook. What we’re doing now is monitoring beach water for the service of the beach.”He said that using this sampling protocol has resulted in lower bacteria levels since Aug. 19.The Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) tests beaches weekly for Enterococci bacteria, which its website defines as an “indicator” of disease-causing organisms associated with fecal waste. Such bacteria can cause gastrointestinal problems in adults and ear infections in children, according to a previous interview with DCR spokesperson SJ Port. If water samples at beaches reveal bacteria levels exceeding the public health standards of either 104 colony forming units per 100 milliliters of water (cfu/100 ml) in a single sample or bacteria levels that are consistently high enough over time, the Department of Public Health (DPH) will close the beach to swimming.While elevated bacteria counts are typically attributed to storm events where storm water runs off dirty streets into the ocean, a majority of this season’s closures have occurred during dry weather. This has had officials looking for sources of sewage that might be leaking into the storm water.The Stacy Brook outlet on the Lynn and Swampscott border has received considerable scrutiny, as 22 of 27 water samples at that site have revealed elevated bacteria levels.As a result, officials in both Swampscott and Lynn – the two communities which contribute water to the Stacy Brook outlet – said they have increased their testing regimen to find the source of the bacteria.Ten of the 11 nodes in the system that drains to Stacy Brook outlet were fine as of Thursday, O’Neill said, one needs further investigation. And monitoring is constant.”If somebody made a connection from their garage last weekend, that could be the issue,” he said. “It’s not as simple as it may seem ? “With the (testing) they recommended, we’ve had great success with finding illicit sewer connections in the past and now we’re going to the next step.”But he stressed that while this sampling technique may lead to fewer beach closures, it does not necessarily eliminate the problem that bacteria could somehow be entering the system through illicit sewer hookups – basically a source that somehow contributes sewage to storm water drains.I don’t think people do it intentionally,” he said. “It’s just we have 200 miles of sanitary sewer and 150 miles of storm drain. It’s a complex system.”Sometimes sewage is tied into a storm drain rather than a sewer line by mistake, O’Neill said, and the long-term project to separate the sewer system and storm water drain system resulted in cap