Raw sewage shuts down one Jersey Shore beach

UPDATE: The beach remains closed for a fourth straight day as new test results show bacteria still at unsafe levels. Click or tap here for more.

A river beach in Belmar was closed on Wednesday as a sewage overflow nearby contaminated the water with unsafe levels of bacteria.

All other beaches in Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May counties were determined to be safe for bathers, according to test results released Wednesday afternoon by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the first tests of the traditional summer season at the Jersey Shore.

Bacteria counts at L Street beach in Belmar came in at nearly 2½ times the safe-swimming standard because raw sewage from a sewer line seeped into a storm drain on K Street, according to the DEP.

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These nasty microbes, which are linked to animal and human excrement, are usually mobilized from land to water by significant rainfall.

Fortunately, Sunday's heavy rain— more than a month's worth of precipitation in some spots — didn't translate into a spate of bacteria advisories in the week after Memorial Day, which marks the beginning of the summer tourism season.

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If follow-up testing performed on Wednesday fails to clear the L Street beach, it will be closed until the bacteria subsides. Those results will be released Thursday afternoon and shared by the Asbury Park Press. More on that in the video above.

An estimated 57 million illnesses are connected to swimming in tainted U.S. waters — rivers, lakes, ponds and the oceans — every year, according to a study released in the medical journal "Environmental Health" in January.

Those maladies could take the form of stomach cramps, a rash or an ear or eye infection.

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To identify bacteria hotspots, New Jersey performs weekly testing at 217 stations near public swimming beaches.

These tests are probing for enterococcus, a bacteria that grows inside the intestines of humans and other warm-blooded animals and can be found alongside their feces. In water where enterococcus is prevalent, other dangerous pathogens tend to lurk.

The New Jersey State Sanitary Code requires that the concentration of bacteria not exceed 104 colony-forming units of enterococci per 100 milliliters of water.

The beaches in the video below failed to meet the safe-swimming standard most often in 2017.

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Memorial Day Weekend started off picturesque but turned dismal on Sunday as heavy rain stole the back half of the holiday weekend.

Five inches of rain fell on Howell on Sunday, the highest mark measured in the state by the NJ Weather and Climate Network. Wall was about a quarter-inch behind.

Most of Monmouth County saw 2 to 3 inches, with less rain to the south in Ocean County. About 4 inches total of rain is normal for the entire month of May in New Jersey.

State and local officials on Tuesday preemptively closed beaches near Wreck Pond in Sea Girt and Spring Lake. The artificial pond has been a recurring source of pollution for nearby beaches when the tide flushes out the bacteria-laden storm runoff.

Those beaches were re-opened on Wednesday.

Rainfall carries animal waste from roofs and asphalt through storm sewers, which funnel this dirty water into streams that eventually feed into rivers, bays and then out into the ocean, where it can take a day or two to dissipate.

Up north, combined-sewer overflows — during which rainwater and raw human sewage mix together and then are released back into the environment untreated — can occur with as little as one-tenth of an inch of rain from a storm. That effluent is carried south toward the Jersey Shore within a day or two.

Newark (1.4 inches) and New York City (1.2) were drenched as well on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.

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Russ Zimmer: 732-557-5748, razimmer@app.com, @russzimmer