Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Federal Beach Protection Funding Ridiculously Inadequate

A paltry $10 Million for the health of American coastlines. Our vile government believes spending billions on bombs and bullets to kill children is more important than the quality of our water. This Administration continues to prove that it cares nothing about public health.

Thirty states and five territories will have to share $10 million in grants for beach water-quality monitoring and public notification programs, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today. Beach water-quality monitoring helps local authorities identify what steps to take to reduce pollution and can lead to advisories or closures when bacteria concentrations reach unhealthy levels.

Michigan, with tens of thousand of miles of coastline gets a measly $280,000.

The grant amount is based on the length of the beach season, miles of beaches and number of beachgoers. All 35 coastal and Great Lakes states and territories maintain monitoring programs using the EPA funding.

EPA says it is focusing efforts on developing new technologies to rapidly analyze beaches for bacteria contamination. Studies involving state-of-the-art detection methods, coupled with population and illness surveys, are under way at various beaches to evaluate the new analytical approaches. Whether or not we can trust them to actually accomplish anything is open to debate.

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