Waste Water Runoff Inadequately Planned

Waste Water Runoff

Inadequately planned growth has been the cause of significant health concerns for America's beaches. In 2004, the Natural Resources Defense Council ordered 19,950 days of beach closures and pollution advisories. This 9% rise from the previous year affected 1,234 ocean and freshwater beaches. "The reason for 85% of the closures and advisories was the detection of excessive counts of fecal bacteria in the beach waters" (Mallin 53). Just as these high amounts of fecal bacteria were unhealthy for humans, they also were unhealthy for shellfish beds, leading to many closures as well.

With this disturbing trend, Mallin sought to investigate the relationship between human population growth and the closure of shellfish beds. This was of vast significance for several reasons. First, if the theorized linkage between population growth and shellfish bed closure was correct, then this information could be used to motivate developers and land owners to utilize more eco-friendly development plans, such as smart growth strategies. Second, healthier shellfish beds equates to healthier people who consume shellfish. Third, understand the causes of shellfish bed contamination, which would lead to action plans to prevent this contamination, also leads to economic benefits of a healthier crop of shellfish. The main point of this article was that human population growth was significantly linked to shellfish bed closures.

The author supported his conclusion with gathered data from his laboratory.

This data was gathered from five coastal North Carolina counties studied. "In 1984, when 352,124 people lived in the five counties, 35,275 acres of shellfish waters were closed; by 2003, the combined population had risen to 501, 596 and the closed acreage had grown to 42, 304" (Mallin 55).

I am convinced that Mallin's theories are true. First, he adequately supports them with his own research data. These quantitative statistics are difficult to ignore. In addition, others have made similar relational connections between populations and shellfish bed closure. Bain concurs with Mallin that shellfish beds closures are on the rise. He cites Kevin McAllister, President of Peconic Baykeeper, in noting that one-third of the Great South Bay's shellfish beds were closed for harvesting because of fecal bacteria, in 2006 (1). A report in Columbian notes that aging septic tanks that overflow in the summertime were a primary factor in the 2003 closure of all of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe's oyster beds in Dungeness Bay ("Pollution Closes" C6).