Keeping it clean at the seaside

Can holidaymakers be certain Yorkshire's beaches are clean? Roger Ratcliffe joined the man whose tests help to decide which are awarded the coveted Blue Flag.

It's a fine blue morning on Bridlington's North Bay, and the forecast is for a real scorcher.

Cars and coaches roll in from Yorkshire's towns and cities to unload mums and dads, kids and grandparents.

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With their beach umbrellas, cool boxes, buckets and spades, they spread out along the chalk-flecked sands, and as bathers splash into the shiny waters of the outgoing tide it's unlikely that anyone pays much attention to a man in lifejacket and waders who is walking purposefully towards the sea.

His name is Wilf Leeman, he works for the Environment Agency, and it's his job to carry out the tests that have helped to make Bridlington North Bay one of Britain's super-beaches.

Every seaside resort in Britain wants to achieve the top accolade, but on this gem of a day there's hardly a baby's breath of air and the Blue Flag that is awarded to such beaches hangs limply from a white pole on the nearby Beaconsfield Promenade. Once a week from the beginning of May until the end of September Wilf starts at Flamborough South Landing and works his way down the coast to Withernsea, testing the water at a total of ten beaches. To the north, a colleague carries out a similar sampling operation at a further ten beaches from Filey up to Staithes.

Other factors are taken into account in deciding a Blue Flag award – things like the provision of lifeguards or lifesaving equipment, good toilets, free drinking water and regular beach cleaning – but unpolluted bathing water is top of the list.

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Wilf collects a sterile bottle of seawater from each beach he visits, puts them in a fridge and returns to his Hull base, where a courier is waiting to take the samples on a 300-mile journey to a laboratory near Exeter.

It is there that Yorkshire's seawater is tested for levels of bacteria, their names like faecal coliform and faecal streptococci leaving little to the imagination. Within days the most recent results for each location – whether good or bad – are posted for bathers and beach-users on a prominent notice board.

Three "emoticons" – a smiling face, a blank expression or a frowning face – tell the story of the latest tests, and help people to decide whether they should

go into the sea. It has always been the paradox of seaside resorts that sewage is discharged off the very coasts that draw millions of visitors each summer. In the Victorian and Edwardian heyday of the British seaside, much of it was pumped either crudely screened or even raw in some cases. But since the 1970s there have been increasingly stricter controls resulting in sophisticated treatment processes that include killing off bacteria with ultraviolet light. Yorkshire Water is spending 110m on further improvements over the next five years.

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In addition, the main sewage outfalls are now further away from the shore, a kilometre or more from the low-tide mark, and the fact that there have been no major public health alerts – at least in Yorkshire – suggests that the system works. There are 20 officially designated bathing beaches on the Yorkshire coast. This year four of them are Blue Flag Beaches and 16 are winners of Quality Beach Awards.

But no-one is complacent, because more difficult to control than sewage is the run-off into drainage ditches produced by muck spreading or by herds of cattle, an unavoidable consequence of not relying on New Zealand for lamb, Argentina for beef or – heaven forbid – France for milk and cheese.

There is also surface water from the drains of industrial estates, towns and villages, and some of this enters streams which discharge into the sea. Wilf's water samples tell just half the story. He takes the temperature of the water, a factor that may influence the potential threat from bacteria, and looks for signs of other pollutants like oil or detergent.

Dead marine life such as fish or crabs will also be noted.

Joining Wilf is Mark Sykes, the Environment Agency's sampling and collection team leader for Yorkshire.

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"We've had a long dry spell of weather," he says, "so I'd expect the results to show that the water conditions are good."

What he means by this is that after periods of heavy rain, significantly more pollution is washed off the land.

In addition, several days of "storm conditions" means that Yorkshire Water's sewage treatment plants can't process the greatly increased flow from drains, and the company is legally permitted to discharge

untreated – but screened – sewage into the sea. Under extreme weather conditions such as prolonged rainfall, it can be pumped out through short sea outfalls closer to the beach. A simple reading of this is that if you are planning on taking your kids for a swim at the seaside then the period following a few days of heavy rain is best avoided. At other times, you probably stand more chance of getting ill from eating an under-cooked burger than picking up something from the water. However, there are still concerns – even during relatively dry periods – about the bacteria samples taken at Staithes and to a lesser extent at Robin Hood's Bay. These beaches will be the focus of more work over the next few years.

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Some of Yorkshire's other beaches were done no favours by last year's wet summer. Hornsea and Withernsea have both lost their coveted Blue Flags this year on the basis of the samples that were collected during the deluge of 2009.

Yorkshire Water takes its responsibilities so seriously that it appointed a Bathing Water Strategy Manager. It is Lee Pitcher's job to make sure the company's operations comply with the increasingly stringent directives from Europe.

The most recent of these will introduce water quality forecasts, like weather forecasts, for every bathing beach. These will declare that the water at specified beaches is "safe" or "unsafe", based on assessments such as the state of the tide, the preceding weather conditions and results from the most recent seawater samples.

Says Lee: "Yorkshire Water want to go further than any other UK water company, so we've secured funding to aim for the highest standards at beaches.

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"One reason for this is that clean bathing water is important to the economy of the coast, and therefore vital to our customers there. Another is that from 2015 the water at UK bathing beaches will have to meet even higher standards to win Blue Flag awards."

Which is great news for East Yorkshire's foreshore manager, Fred Walkington. Fred was awarded an MBE after 25 years as coxswain of Bridlington Lifeboat, so safety is always uppermost in his mind. Now he has the task of making sure that people enjoy visiting the beaches from Flamborough down to Withernsea.

"As a council we can do a lot to make our beaches better," Fred says. "Things like cleaning them every day from April through to the end of October, and providing other facilities.

"People don't come to Brid to spend a week or a fortnight in boarding houses they way they used to. These days most of our tourists are day trippers, and they will always head for the best beaches."

More than ever, best now means the cleanest.

Yorkshire's best beaches

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There are 20 beaches officially designated as bathing waters on Yorkshire's 60 miles of coast. Through the spring and summer months each one receives frequent water quality checks by the Environment Agency to ensure that it meets minimum public health standards.

There are tests for three types of bacteria which can be indicators of sewage and agricultural contamination, and the most recent results are posted on notice boards at the respective beaches as a guide to bathers and other beach-users.

Only beaches which have been officially designated as "Resort Beaches" – those at the main coastal towns – can qualify for the annual Blue Flag award. These beaches have to meet a long list of criteria besides that of good water quality. For 2010, Blue Flags have been awarded to Whitby West Cliff, Scarborough North Bay, Filey, and Bridlington North Bay. Other beaches can qualify for a Quality Coast Award.

These are the less-busy beaches, but ones which are judged to provide a high standard of experience on the coast.

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This year Yorkshire's Quality Coast Award winners are: Runswick Bay, Sandsend, Whitby West Cliff, Robin Hood's Bay, Scarborough North Bay, Scarborough South Bay, Cayton Bay, Filey, Flamborough South Landing, Danes Dyke, Bridlington South Bay, Wilsthorpe, Fraisthorpe, Barmston, Hornsea, Withernsea.

YP MAG 19/6/10