It was not a great summer for the beaches of Rye.
Oakland Beach, Playland Beach, and the beach at the Coveleigh Club were all closed to swimmers for a full week in early August.
There’s certainly good news on the beachfront: the water of the Long Island Sound off the shore of Rye has become significantly cleaner over the last 50 years. But that water has not become consistently clean enough — and the primary culprit is runoff of sewage and lawn fertilizer from our own streets and homes.
That mixed review is the conclusion of Save the Sound, a group focused on improving the water quality of the vast estuary that stretches from New London to Orient Point.
“The contaminant levels have gone way down,” said Peter Linderoth, director of water quality for Save the Sound.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) points to one key measure: the extent of the Sound contaminated by “hypoxia,” or excess nitrogen from sewage and fertilizer that drive out fish. That hypoxia level has declined by half, from 205 square miles to just 95 — which helps explain why most Sound Shore beaches are swimmable 80 percent of summer days, or more.
That’s a sharp contrast to the summer of 1964, when the threat of raw sewage from Port Chester forced the Westchester County Health Commissioner to forbid swimming for all beaches in the County — for the entire summer. The Sound Shore faces nothing close to such a crisis today.
But that’s hardly a glowing report card.
Based on federal data compiled by Save the Sound, Rye Town Beach rates just a C- for its water quality, though even that low grade means it’s safe for swimming 83 percent of the time. Our expectations have become higher. (In 2023, Playland Beach received a C; Coveleigh, a C-, American Yacht Club a B-, Westchester Country Club an A- and Shenorock Shore Club an A+.)
The general improvement is the long-term result of a sea change in federal policy sparked by the Clean Water Act of 1972, which authorized federal funding to build new sewage treatment plants across the country. That sharply limited the extent of fecal bacteria flowing from toilets into waterways, which had led health officials to close beaches because of the threat of sickness. Federal funding has helped support $2.5 billion in new sewage treatment plants in Port Chester, Mamaroneck, and Rye’s Disbrow Park, reducing what the EPA calls the “nitrogen load” by 47 million pounds.
That has brought the return of fish and other aquatic life — as those hoping to catch blackfish off Playland Pier will tell you.
But that improvement can’t guarantee that our beaches can stay open all summer — or that we can once again grow and gather oysters and crabs in Milton Harbor, as did the 19th-century “watermen” of Rye.
Closing beaches brings not only inconvenience but economic cost, including revenue losses for both Playland and Rye Town Park.
That bad news, says Peter Linderoth, is the result of sources of contamination much harder to control than our main sewage flows — and our street surfaces and the types of fertilizer residents are using on their lawns play a role.
“There’s no industrial villain or something like that you can point to,” Linderoth said.
The key factor in beach closures, he said, sounds minor but it’s not: street runoff. In a heavy rainstorm, old sewer pipes that link Rye homes to those modern sewage treatment plants can overflow or leak, releasing bacteria-laden water onto our streets. From there, they “run off” to our shoreline and beaches. That’s why beaches close “pre-emptively” when heavy rain is in the forecast.
That runoff also includes nitrogen fertilizer from lawns and even the fecal matter from dogs, deer, and geese — all of which add to the problem.
“Any time you have heavy development along a coastline, you have a risk of that sort of contamination,” Linderoth said.
Contaminated waters roll off impermeable surfaces like parking lots and driveways and into Rye waterways. As a result, the most polluted waterway in the city is not the Sound but the Blind Brook, which is lined by residences and flows directly into the Sound.
Ongoing local infrastructure investments should help. New sewer and manhole upgrades are being made in Rye and throughout Sound Shore communities, spurred by the settlement of a 2015 lawsuit brought by Save the Sound. In December of last year, the Rye City Council approved $13.3 million in contracts for such work, and began work over the summer. The ultimate price tag for that work will be an estimated $22 million, City Manager Greg Usry said. While that work has missed deadlines, it should be done by the end of this year.
“New sewer linings” may not sound dramatic, but they can prevent the runoff that closes beaches. “Over time,” Linderoth said, “we should see improvement.”
But public works are not the full answer, he said. Private decisions made by residents make a big difference.
Linderoth urged residents to: replace at least some of their lawns with “rain gardens,” which absorb more water; use less fertilizer, and choose fertilizer that has less nitrogen. Even including trees in new parking lots — like the one behind stores on Purchase Street — helps.
For one charged with “saving the Sound,” Linderoth actually exudes optimism.
He noted that oyster aquaculture has taken hold on Long Island’s North Shore.
“I can imagine it returning to the Sound in Westchester,” he said.
