Beach data must drive clean-water vigilance
Everyone who loves Hawai'i beaches can feel relieved to hear that shoreline water quality here is better than in most states.
Relieved, but not complacent — or even particularly surprised.
Really, the statistics released by the National Resources Defense Council proclaim nothing unexpected: Come on in, the water's fine.
But instead of being satisfied, government and citizens should furrow their brows in the effort to improve conditions further.
In any state that markets itself as an environmental pearl, it's a given that the bar should be raised high.
According to the council's just-released "Testing the Waters" report, Hawai'i's 2007 beach study ranks this state 25th among the 30 states surveyed. That means only five states had lower percentages of water samples exceeding national standards for levels of contaminants.
But not all the news was so rosy. The increase in contaminated waters between 2006 and 2007 signals a need for greater vigilance.
About 9 percent of samples exceeded the state's daily maximum bacterial standards in 2007, compared with 3 percent in 2006 and 4 percent in 2005.
Hawai'i has relatively little of the industrial point sources of pollution. Instead, the challenge is to reduce the pollutants that rush into the ocean from non-point sources — primarily from storm runoff.
Isle streams have been largely channelized in flood-control projects of the past, and there's little to slow the flow of urban pollutants that enter streams from storm drains and exit near beaches and reefs.
Fortunately, government has heard this message and is beginning to respond:
These new strategies need to move beyond the experimental stage and become standard practice.
So do old strategies, such as management practices of ancient Hawaiians that consider land-sea regions as a unified whole.
Individuals also have a responsibility to realize that the trash they pitch into the stream may pollute the beaches they cherish. For example: They should take care to avoid applying fertilizer to their lawns while a rainstorm threatens, or dumping household chemicals where they could run down to the storm drains. Public education on this point would help.
At a time when the state must work harder than ever to persuade tourists to visit, Hawai'i cannot afford to rest on its laurels. The new data on the state's beach quality should lead Isle residents to draw the correct conclusion: We can do better. And we must.
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