By John H. Palmer

A report by a Long Island Sound advocacy group has found that the water quality at Westport’s beaches has generally declined over the last two years.

The 2025 Long Island Sound Beach Report, which is published every two years, acts as a report card for the status of water quality at the beaches surrounding the Sound. The grades that beaches receive are based how often the water was deemed unsafe for swimming as well how contaminated the water was on the worst day of the season.

Save the Sound, a member-supported environmental action organization whose mission is to protect and improve the water and air quality and preserve the lands of the Long Island Sound region in New York and Connecticut, based this year’s grades based on data gathered between 2022 and 2024. (The entire report can be read as a PDF attachment at the end of this story.)

The grades represent each individual beach’s performance as measured against state criteria for safe swimming. Every week during swimming season, local beach monitors – deployed in most places by health departments – collect water samples to be analyzed for levels of fecal indicator bacteria.

“It’s not an alert system to notify beachgoers of current conditions at a beach they may be headed to,” the report authors wrote. “Instead, these grades evaluate a beach’s water quality history, painting a picture of how safe the water has been for swimming, under wet and dry conditions. The Beach Report won’t help you decide whether to go in the water today, but we hope it will identify potential problem areas and inform conversations between residents, local officials, and interested organizations about solutions that will improve and maintain water quality at our beaches for the future.”

Each beach was assigned a grade for overall water quality during swimming season. In addition, the beaches were given for so-called dry and wet weather “failures,” defined as concentrations of fecal materials detected during prolonged dry weather or after a major rain event.

Specifically, the report found the following about Westport’s beaches:

• Compo Beach received a B-minus grade for 2024, compared to B-plus in 2023 and an A grade in 2022. Compo was issued an “F” grade for readings taken after rain events and a “D” grade for the frequency of these events. This was a step down from the previous two years, where the beach laregly received a “C” rating or better.
• Burying Hill Beach received a C-plus grade in 2024, as opposed to A-plus ratings in both 2023 and 2022. It received an “F” rating for levels of contamination found in the water after a rain event, which was also a step down from “A” grade receieved in 2023 and 2022.
• Sherwood Island State Park received B-plus grade for both 2024 and 2023, a step back from its A-plus rating for 2022. The park’s ratings on contamination levels after rain events and the frequency of these events stayed the same from the previous years, earning a “C” and “D” rating respectively.
• Old Mill Beach was not included in the report.

There are many reasons the report gives for heightened contamination levels, including a community’s stormwater runoff, compromises in municipal sewer systems, animal waste, and improperly maintained septic systems.

In addition, contaminaton levels can be affected by a particular season’s weather. The last few years have been particularly rainy, the report points out, as a total of 22 inches fell around the region in 2024, the second-highest since the group began tracking that data in 2009.

“We’ve said it before: when it rains, it’s poor,” the report said. “Many Long Island Sound beaches tend to experience a temporary decline in water quality after a rain event. Annual rainfall totals are expected to continue increasing, as is the frequency and intensity of severe storms, a consequence of climate change that will impact water quality around the region.”

Location also matters. Report authors note that factors such as location on the Sound can affect water quality dramatically. For instance, beaches located on coastal areas and those closer to the open ocean receive larger quantities of tidal flushing, which may be helpful in dispersing contamination. Beaches on tidal marshes or in bays, on the other hand, may take longer for similar tidal flushing to occur.

“That’s why you can see beaches preemptively closed for a day or more after a rainstorm. It could be a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky, but the water quality at the beach may not have had enough time to recover from the previous day’s rain and return to meeting the state-established safe swimming criteria,” according to the report.

John Palmer, a Norwalk native, is executive editor of the Westport Journal, and has covered community news in Fairfield County and Massachusetts for over 30 years. He can be contacted at jpalmer@westportjournal.com.

Access the 2025 Long Island Sound Beach Report below: