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Joe Costa English I Block 3 Mrs. Knowles 28 January 2013 Pollution Today Worse Than Ever I have heard a lot of things about how polluting the beaches are wrong. I have also heard that polluting the beaches is not just on the land but also in the water. On the beaches there are these trenches called swashes that too looked like swamps. When it rains the entire sewer water and whatever is in the sewer would march through the swashes and wash away into the ocean like little solders. In the swashes there are a lot of bacteria. The bacteria get sent into the ocean and then the ocean gets contaminated. When I found out a few months ago that the swashes contain bacteria and I thought about the rain and then all of the bacteria going into the ocean I got distraught. I remember when I lived in New Jersey and my family and I would go on vacation in South Carolina. When we went on the beaches here my parents told me not to mess with the trash on the beach like firework leftovers, cigarette buts, and sometimes when I would go to the ocean I would see baby dippers and other trash. When tourists come to South Carolina, they leave their trash on the beach but dont pick it up and throw it away. Just recently in September I went to the Myrtle Beach state park with a group of people for a beach sweep. We went around the state park and my group collected more than three bags of trash and two bags of cigarette buts. After doing that I finally realized how the pollution on the beach is worse today than ever.

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When looking on the website www.ndrc.org I found out that beach pollution is not just on the beach but also in the ocean. The way to protect beach goers from the waterborne illness is by getting strong policies to find unsafe beach water and clean up the major sources of the beach pollution. In South Carolina there are a total of 63 beaches in this state that line 180 miles of Atlantic coastline. The Grand Strand communities have constructed storm water outfalls that are deep in the ocean instead of at the beach so they can reduce the localized pollution concentrations for the local swimmers. There are samples taken in the ocean that is 20 to 40 inches deep. This is 12 inches below the surface. The data taken for the monitoring season of bacteria in South Carolina is from May 15 to October 15. Sampling is conducted at the swashes and outfalls where water quality is expected to be the poorest. The parts of the beach that the water quality has fallen below the required standards are sampled daily. The seven total advisory events in the last six consecutive weeks or less increased to ten days in 2011 from the four days in 2010. The DHEC issues an advisory immediately when the enterococcus bacteria level is 500 cfu/100 ml or higher. I would like to continue the research and explore more on beach pollution. The reason is because I think learning about this topic is important because I think that some people do not understand how bad polluting the beach is. Also I think that people are not informed enough on the issue on bacteria in the ocean. I would like to inform people about keeping our beaches clean. I would like to find out why people leave their trash on the beach and will not throw their trash out.