Belle Isle water prompts concern

[kraig]

Thursday, May 21, 2009
Belle Isle water prompts concern

Group wants to monitor beach's pollution levels

Jim Lynch / The Detroit News

There isn't much that's tropical about Krystale Houston's West Detroit neighborhood so, for her, the beach at Belle Isle Park is a real escape. In the summers, she and her friends try to get there every other day or so for swimming and sunning.
"I come here to get away," said the 24-year-old on a warm Monday afternoon. "Since we don't have any real beaches we can come out here and pretend. It's beautiful and the water is free."
But depending on which public beach you're talking about in Metro Detroit, that water gets varying levels of attention from health officials charged with ensuring it's safe to swim in. And while surrounding governments have compiled years of data on their beaches -- telling them which times are most likely to produce E.coli contamination -- Detroit's only public beach at Belle Isle has never been monitored regularly.
It wasn't until researchers from the University of Michigan tested the water in 2005 that E.coli levels high enough to cause concern were discovered along Belle Isle. Those findings were shared with Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice.
The environmental group is dissatisfied with the city's handling of Belle Isle's beach and is preparing to put its own muscle behind an effort to level that playing field. Group members believe city residents should have the same protections as suburban residents and are organizing a team of volunteers to perform regular water testing at Belle Isle.
Five of the organization's interns will be trained in water sampling on June 23, and as many as 25 volunteers will be trained in July. Testing crews will turn their samples over to researchers at Wayne State University for analysis and the results will be posted on the organization's Web site.
According to records collected by Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality, the beach at the city park has never been tested with regularity. There are no state laws requiring regular testing of public beaches, however some government agencies clearly give monitoring for E.coli bacteria a higher priority than others.
For the last half century, the Macomb County Health Department has been testing its public beaches twice a week. Any results requiring the department to shut down the beach area to swimming are immediately posted on the county's Web site.
Oakland County typically monitors as many as 60 public beach/swimming areas with the help of a team of student interns. Those students sample water at each site once a week. This year, however, budget constraints mean the county will cut its monitoring load by half.
Water sampling records are tracked by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
City officials "have indicated that they do monitoring, but they've also indicated that they don't have the capacity to provide that information to the public," said Donelle Wilkins, executive director of Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice. "... We want to make certain that the public, those who swim at Belle Isle beach who aren't always able to get out to Kensington Metropark or Metro Beach, gets the same kind of information."
Donald Hamel, environmental health services administrator for Detroit's Health and Wellness Promotion Department, said the city plans to continue sampling this year and he offered several reasons as to why the testing began in 2008.
"It was really the state... there was state money available and then a decision by our department to go ahead and do [[the testing) and get paid for it," he said. "We were always reluctant. I don't really have a good rationale why we didn't. We talked about it, but we never started doing it."
Some beaches in Metro Detroit, such as Blossom Heath in St. Clair Shores, are magnets for E.coli contamination because of their location and the configuration of the shoreline.
Belle Isle is a completely different animal. Situated in the middle of the Detroit River away from the shores on both sides, water moves along the island's beach area at a fairly rapid pace -- meaning any contamination that arrives there won't stay long.
Yet Belle Isle has its own problems, including a plentiful supply of geese and seagulls. Fecal waste from birds, particularly after rains, can lead to contamination.
The two months of sampling conducted last year at Belle Isle had four individual E.coli readings above acceptable levels. While a single reading over acceptable levels is not enough to close a beach to swimmers, officials with Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice said city residents deserve the same kind of water monitoring as their suburban counterparts.
jlynch@detnews.com [[313) 222-2034


© Copyright 2008 The Detroit News. All rights reserved.





Let me guess, it must be the truck traffic going to the Ambassador Bridge?

On the real, the City of Detroit's Environmental Affairs Department needs to get on this. MDEQ and the County as well, if they're authorized to.

[Ray1936]

I've often wondered how clear the water in the Detrot River might have been when Cadillac arrived. I'd bet it was just sparkling, save for some sediment near the shorelines.

[MIRepublic]

Some beaches in Metro Detroit, such as Blossom Heath in St. Clair Shores, are magnets for E.coli contamination because of their location and the configuration of the shoreline.

Belle Isle is a completely different animal. Situated in the middle of the Detroit River away from the shores on both sides, water moves along the island's beach area at a fairly rapid pace -- meaning any contamination that arrives there won't stay long.

Yet Belle Isle has its own problems, including a plentiful supply of geese and seagulls. Fecal waste from birds, particularly after rains, can lead to contamination.

How do you solve this short of pissing off another environmental group? They are kind of wrong, though. The channel between the mainland and the island does contribute to this. The island may be in the middle of the river, but the river flows more swiftly through the deeper water and channel [[Fleming Channel) to the south of the island than it does through the shallow waters [[Scott Middle Ground) between the isle and the mainland. No, the location has a lot to do with it. In fact, the Scott Middle Ground which lays directly east of the MacArthur Bridge between the Boat Club and Yatch Club, is only a foot to five feet deep. Water travels through this area significantly slower from what I can tell. That there is a beach where there is one, on Belle Isle, should tell the reporter that the water is more stagnant than anywhere else on the island.

[Hamtragedy]

There is a noticeable current when swimming, which I've timed myself along the buoy line, [[which is only 5 feet deep). And I'm still itching from last summer!

Ray, we were driving thru Belle Isle a couple winters ago in February during one of that month's regular endless squalls. We got out of the car and walked thru the snow. The air was so calm and eerily quiet, and visibility about 50 feet, you could have heard Cadillac paddling a canoe. No highway noise, no air traffic, no orange glow. It could have been 300 years ago.

[Crystal]

The News article does not say what the E. coli levels were, or how the samples were taken. On the local news on TV last night they also did not say what the E. coil levels were.

Regular E. coli testing on Belle Isle's beach is a great idea, long overdue, but I have to say I am disappointed in yet another incomplete investigative news piece.

"... high enough to cause concern"? If they let us know how high, we could see for ourselves if it exceeds the MDEQ limit.

[DetroitPlanner]

Wanna bet the beach had a worse e-coli problem when the island was known as Isle des Couchons?

[Gistok]

MIRepublic... are there recent maps of the water depths off of Belle Isle?

The one I remember being posted on this forum was about 85 years old. And yes in some places Scott Middle Ground was very very shallow. Do recent maps still show this boating hazzard, or has dredging taken care of some of the dangerous shallow areas of Scott Middle Ground?

[Mikeg]

Click here to view a partial image from a 1980 USGS Topo Map showing water depths in the Scott Middle Grounds off of Belle Isle. To view the interactive Topo Map, click here then pan to the east and zoom in.

I happen to have a recent map of Belle Isle plus one showing what is looked like in 1896. I have oriented and scaled them on this web page so that they are approximately the same and aligned the bridge locations so that you can compare them and see how the island has grown from the fill material that has been dumped there over the years.