Atlantic Beach Closed Today

For daily beach closings click the link on the left. This closing is very odd because we did not have any rain yesterday. Over the past few days, we've had a little but over an inch??? It takes the beach 24 hrs. to recover from an inch of rainfall.

My partner & I did First Beach testing this a.m. We noticed more seaweed than ever! It was a 16 ft. wrack of seaweed- wow! My partner's thoughts are that the bacteria coming from the moat were trapped in the heavy red seaweed. Makes sense to me. BTW, water temp is almost 63 degrees.

The recent plan for Middletown AND Newport to build a small UV treatment plan (near the current outflow area) is a good one. It's not a cure! The UV system works by killing the water outflow with expensive UV lights. The system would only be run after/during a rainstorm. This would be during the beach season only. It also would handle a max of water, meaning that excessively heavy rainfalls could still result in some pollution.

This system also incurs yearly expenses to run it. It does minimize the pollution problem, though, and this is what counts. You'll be hearing more about this.