So What If CSOs Bypass: Beaches in Monmouth

This is the second of a three-part blog about Combined Sewer Overflows.

Part of the trash that lands on beaches in the County when the wind and currents are blowing our way are whitish-gray clumps called “grease balls” or "sewage cakes". They are the Fats, Oil, and Grease (FOG) that have hardened into soap that is scoured off CSO pipes when it rains. They look like dirty Styrofoam, but smear like grease. Clean Ocean Action has some good pictures on their Marine Debris page. They often contain more bacteria than can be counted. In the past, they have tested higher than 160,000 colonies of fecal coliform. Beaches close when there are more than 104 colonies of enterococcus bacteria; before 2004, the criteria was 200 colonies of fecal coliform. Assume grease balls are loaded with bacteria.

But it's not just about bacteria. Fats are made of organic carbon that easily adsorbs chemicals. In 2008, the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program reported that the average concentrations of PCBs, pesticides, dioxins/furans, cadmium, and mercury were higher in the CSO and stormwater discharges than in treated sewage effluents. The USGS found that CSOs can also be an important source of hormones and other wastewater micropollutants. Similar work Europe found that CSOs contained numerous priority pollutants. I am not aware of any studies that have tested individual grease balls for chemicals.

Stormwater from local storm drains is almost always the source of the bacteria that close beaches. But very rarely - 3 times out of 420 sampling events from 2004 to 2010 - bacterial exceedences were most likely caused by the Hudson-Raritan plume drifting inshore. The most spectacular event happened in August of 2010, when 25 sampling sites along 38 miles of beach from Sandy Hook to Seaside Park failed the bacterial standard on Monday – then passed it on Tuesday. These seventy five resamples, three for each of the original 25 failures, were taken by two independent county health departments using two different laboratories. A number of these ephemeral exceedences occurred at beaches without storm drains, including eight stations along seven miles in Ocean County, from Point Pleasant Beach to Seaside Park. The NJDEP reported that there were no problems at sewer plants in Monmouth or Ocean counties. Rainfall was only around half an inch. The plume for the Manasquan River by Point Pleasant was nothing special. The full report is here.

Which Way the Wind Blows

Luckily for beaches in Monmouth County, the prevailing winds during the summer are from the southwest. They blow currents and the waste in the Hudson-Raritan plume out to sea or towards Long Island – until they shift onshore. For example, in July 2004, a trash slick that was recirculating in a eddy off Sandy Hook blew onshore when the wind changed, washing up along seven miles of beaches before blowing away. Figure 7 in this 2007 paper by the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University shows a satellite photo of the recirculation pattern off Sandy Hook as well as the Hudson-Raritan plume hugging the Monmouth shoreline. The New York Harbor Observing and Prediction System (NYHOPS) provides a real-time look at which way currents are heading.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

You have to report sewage spills and other emergencies to the NJDEP by phone (1-877-WARNDEP) to get a NJDEP Case Number (12 digits in this format: XX-XX-XX-XXXX-XX) so you can track the response. The NJDEP has a Twitter account that doesn't seem to be active (@NJDEPcomms). You can also call your local health department.

The third of a three-part blog about Combined Sewer Overflows is at http://middletown-nj.patch.com/blogs/bill-simmonss-blog.