By Gretchen Webster

Next year when water testing at Westport’s beaches starts up again on Memorial Day, the testing protocol may be different. 

In an effort to close beaches less often, Erik Barbieri, director of Parks and Recreation and Lucy Bango, the director of the Aspetuck Valley Health District, have been working on making some changes in the testing process, and will continue discussing the options over the winter to be prepared for summer, they both said.

Testing season is over

Water testing at Westport’s beaches finished for the season at the end of August, encompassing the traditional beach season of Memorial Day to Labor Day, Bango said. Testing water at the town beaches is discretionary, she said, although most towns in Fairfield County do it.

“If we decide we don’t want to test, it’s not required. It’s all discretionary,” she said. “It’s just a service … It’s up to towns and cities if they want to post an advisory or a closure.”

The Health District, which covers Westport, Weston and Easton, tests water at beaches in Westport and a swimming pond in Weston on a regular basis, she said.  But the process is more arduous and complicated than some people realize, she said.

One of the Health District’s three full-time sanitarians has to go to each beach first thing every morning, collect the samples and get them to Fairfield by 10 a.m. when a state courier (“if there is a courier to take it,”) delivers the samples to a state lab in Rocky Hill, she said. The state tests the samples for free in Hartford.

Too much bacteria forces closure

If the bacteria counts are above recommended levels, the town may close the beach the next day – and start the whole process over again the following day. Since the water samples have to rest for 24 hours for the bacteria to grow, and it takes time to get the samples to the state lab – sometimes beaches in Westport get closed for the weekend when testing in a closer lab may have prevented the closure, according to Barbieri.  Beaches in Westport were closed several times this summer.

“There will be some more attention to this before we open next year so we can make every effort not to have [beaches] close – or for closures to be as minimal as possible,” he said. “We are currently working on procedure.” The town has already added some additional locations for testing, he said.

Closer labs are more expensive

Greenwich and Stamford are two municipalities that have their own labs, Bango said, and she reached out to Stamford officials during the summer to see if Westport could use the Stamford lab for water testing. “They were willing to do it for a fee,” she said. The fee would be imposed each time samples were brought for testing which could be several consecutive days if bacteria levels were high and beaches were closed. Another option would be to hire a company to come in and handle the whole process from water sampling to lab tests, she said.

The waters of Long Island Sound and the tributaries that feed it are also tested for pollution by the nonprofit environmental group, Harbor Watch. They do not specifically test at the beaches of the Sound, however.