Sent by citizen reporters Susan and Barry Krumm reportng from the North End beach.. 5/31/17
The Rainbow Connection. Ocean Pathway. Ocean Grove. 2013 Paul Goldfinger photo ©
Does this advisory surprise you? The Monmouth County Health Dept has been checking* the ocean water every Monday for many years at 50 ocean sites, and, it turns out, Ocean Grove has had a tendency to have worse problems than other beaches in our area. Our water tests positive* for enterococci (coliforms) derived from feces more often. Tomorrow, the Health Dept will close our beaches if the count remains too high, not only at the North End, but also at the South End.
Why should our beaches be more of a problem than others? The general answer is that we are situated between two “ocean lakes”—Wesley and Fletcher which collect dirty street water which then runs off into the ocean. The fecal bacteria could be traced to inland infrastructure failures (ie sewer lines leaking) but mostly it is from dirty street water runoff, and oftentimes the source of that bacteria is animal feces.
The high counts get worse when there are rain storms—which the Dept of Health, in a rare moment of humor, refers to as “crappy weather.”
And there are other issues for Ocean Grove. Wesley Lake receives a huge volume of street water during storms, and Wesley Lake itself has higher temperatures than other area lakes (? reason) and it receives a large amount of “nutrients” (nitrates and phosphates ? from fertilizers.)
Whenever an area is “built out,” the amount of dirty water runoff increases, and guess what: The Ocean Grove side of Wesley Lake is worse than the Asbury part because there is a four foot pipe that carries street runoff from NEPTUNE TOWNSHIP—an area reaching from Neptune Rt. 35 and Neptune Boulevard all the way east to the Lake.
Regarding Wesley Lake, the Health Dept. Specialist that I spoke to refers to the Wesley Lake water condition as being “pretty bad.” But, he believes that the main source of the enterococci detected in our ocean test is NEPTUNE TOWNSHIP.
He says that “detention basin” is not a bad name for what goes on there because since the ocean end of the Lake was essentially closed off in the past, the Lake became the place where rainwater runoff sits.
And the Township has not shared that bacterial information with us nor has the Wesley Lake Commission, unless they are ignorant of this issue.
The County Health Department is currently embarking on a two year study of Wesley Lake, and when it is over, they will look at possible remediation recommendations. But because Neptune, Ocean Grove, and Asbury are so built up, it isn’t clear that they can do anything to fix the infrastructure (old sewer lines.) Perhaps they will make other recommendations.
We received today’s information from David Sorenson, Environmental Health Specialist at the Monmouth County Health Dept. Their phone number is 732 431 7456, and I would suggest that the Wesley Lake Commission and the Friends of Wesley Lake jot down his phone number. He also recommends a web site where the data can be reviewed:
—–*Coastal Cooperative Beach Program