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New York City beaches are back

By David Freedlander | dfreedlander@am-ny.com

6:51 PM EDT, July 24, 2008

In the sultry New York summer of 1988, Rick Astley and INXS ruled the airwaves, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" was the hit movie, and New York City beaches were awash in filth.

Headlines at the time blared the alarming evidence.

"Shore Pollution Driving Away Summer Tourists," read one. "Medical Waste Keeps Three New York Beaches Shut," said another.

Amid fears of AIDS, beachgoers frequently stumbled upon syringes, vials, and other pieces of medical waste. A skit on the HBO show "Not Necessarily the News" showed a hospital patient, bed and all, washing up on the shoreline.

Yesterday, on a steamy July afternoon at Coney Island, beachgoers played in the sun, blithely unaware of how spoiled the sand beneath them once was.

"Back in the day there was not just refuse but broken glass, intravenous needles, and crack viles," recalled Tony Touma, 34, who was born and raised in nearby Bensonhurst, as he surveyed the shore from the boardwalk. "Nowadays there are more trash receptacles."

Indeed, through increase vigilance, better water-quality testing, and improved beach combing, the city's shoreline is cleaner than it's been in decades, observers say. But some environmentalists are quick to point out that the battle against beach pollution is hardly over.

Still, nothing in the waters today resembles the nightmare of the summer of '88.

"Back then things just reached a boiling point," said Anna Will, an organizer with Clean Ocean Action, a waterfront advocacy group. "People demanded that something be done. It goes to show that when we work together to fix a problem, we can fix it."

One key fix that is still paying off was implemented the very next summer. The federal Environmental Protection Agency still conducts six-day-a-week helicopter tours of the metro-area waterways in an effort to spot large garbage floes in the New York harbor.

Once spotted, they radio the Army Corps of Engineers who come by and swoop up the congealed plastic bottles, rubber tires, and other debris and deposit it in a landfill. Since the program began, they've gathered 353 million pounds of debris, according to Helen Grebe, who monitors the program for the EPA.

More awareness about recycling and litter helps too, say beach advocates.

Some, though, say it's still not enough. Currently 27 billion gallons of sewage are poured in the city's waterways each year, mostly because the city's sewer system gets stretched beyond capacity after heavy rainfalls.

"You take a historic sweep over a period of decades, sure, there has been improvement, but despite that, there are still serious issues that remain to be solved," said Larry Levine, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

On Long Island, two dozen beaches were closed yesterday after health officials expressed concern of elevated bacteria levels due to this week's thunderstorms.

Most worrisome to Levine, whose group is supposed to release a report next week assessing beach quality, is that after the city finds high bacteria levels, they come back and re-test the next day instead of issuing an immediate advisory.

"People are not made aware of when it is safe or unsafe," he said. "The bottom line is it's New York, in 2008, the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the world and here we are with 27 billion gallons of sewage in our rivers and beaches."

Henry Stern, who presided over the beaches as Parks Commissioner back when they were at their nadir, agrees that the shore line today is as good as it's ever been.

He disputes though the characterization of the summer of 1988 as a filthy one for beaches.

"It was never an impediment for use of the beaches, except for the most refined people," he said. "The papers made it worse than it was. It wasn't like the black plague or anything. Green plague maybe, or something like that."