Beach water quality report kicks sand at Myrtle Beach

By Lorena Anderson - landerson@thesunnews.com

MYRTLE BEACH --

South Carolina ranks eighth in the nation in terms of beach water quality, but Horry County beach water is the dirtiest in the state, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council's 20th annual "Testing the Water" report issued Wednesday.

But Myrtle Beach City Manager Tom Leath called the report "bull."

"It's so incomplete and misleading, it's laughable," he said. "They've been whacking on us for years. They never give us a good rating, no matter what we do."

Full list of beach ratings

Leath said the report misleads people by saying "the beach" as if all 10 miles of the city's coastline were polluted.

The report's national rankings list the top 10 states as New Hampshire, Delaware, Oregon, Virginia, Hawaii, North Carolina, Maryland, South Carolina, Washington and Florida. The bottom five are Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Rhode Island and Louisiana.

Among the 63 S.C. beaches discussed in the report, 4 percent exceeded state standards for bacteria and pollutants at one time or another during 2009, the report shows. Most of them were in Horry County, and specifically the Myrtle Beach-Surfside Beach area. The 4 percent is down from 7 percent in 2008.

The report covers 3,000 of the nation's beaches, offers a special look at the effects of the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, and rates 200 of the nation's top vacation beaches on a five-star water quality scale.

The report shows Gulf region beaches from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle have been closed or faced health warnings nearly 10 times more often this summer than last because of oil from BP's Deepwater Horizon leak.

More than 2,200 closings, health advisories or notices were issued by state or local authorities through Tuesday because of oil from the spill. That compared with 237 closings and advisories in the same period last year, mainly because of bacteria or viruses in the water, the NRDC said.

In looking at the percent of water-monitoring samples that exceeded South Carolina's acceptable bacteria levels, the nonprofit NRDC found the beaches with the highest exceedence rates were:

South Carolina State Park and Campground, 15 percent;

Surfside Beach, 10 percent;

Springmaid Beach, 9 percent;

Myrtle Beach, 7 percent.

Horry County's 6 percent overall exceedence rate was the highest county in the state, followed by Colleton County with 1 percent exceedence. There were no exceedences reported in Charleston, Beaufort and Georgetown counties.

South Carolina State Park and Campground, Myrtle Beach, Springmaid Beach and Surfside Beach each received a one-star rating out of a possible five because, the report says, they only meet one of the quality criteria - posting closings and advisories online and at the beach.

North Myrtle Beach received three stars for its overall water quality last year and in the past three years, plus its timely reporting of beach advisories and closings.

The report rates the beaches based on overall water quality for 2009, the water quality for the past three years, how often water quality is tested, how promptly the advisories are issued when there is a problem and whether an area posts closings and advisories online and at the beach.

The other S.C. beaches that earned three stars are Hilton Head Island, Hunting Island, Edisto Beach and Folly Beach. No S.C. beach earned more than three stars. Arcadia Beach in Horry County earned two stars, one for posting its advisories and one for last year's overall water quality.