NEWPORT -- Lawrence and Meghan Allen are standing in line for the outdoor showers at Easton's Beach on a scorching afternoon recently. They're dripping wet, the first clue that the father and daughter from Shrewsbury, Mass., have just stepped out of the surf. The other is the gooey red stuff spotting their skin and bathing suits.
"The water's OK," says 13-year-old Meghan, "but it's kind of gross."
On this and many days, the swells roll past the breathtakingly beautiful mansions and rocky cliffs of this tourist mecca. But when the waves roll ashore on the city's best-known beach, they rise red and thick, depositing seaweed on the sand, like a crimson comforter being pulled over the beach.
"Is it red tide?" a woman walking along the water's edge asks a stranger examining a handful of the seaweed.
It's a common question this summer since red tide shut down shellfish beds from Maine to Buzzards Bay between May and July. But the culprit there was a toxic one-celled algae (called Alexandrium) that is harmful to humans who ingest shellfish contaminated with it.
What plagues Easton's Beach like no other beach in Rhode Island -- and has for as long as anyone can remember -- is a different kind of algae. It's a multicelled, plantlike organism that is essentially benign -- unless you're a swimmer disgusted by wading in it or a town official concerned it is scaring off tourists and choking beach receipts.
And there are new concerns that the seaweed may be playing a role in pollution closures at Easton's, also known as First Beach.
It's enough to grab the attention of the governor and to have officials in Middletown and Newport scurrying like never before to remove seaweed from the beach and to reduce sewage runoff nearby, all at a cost of several million dollars.
CAROL THURNBER, wearing sunglasses and a cap, stands at the water's edge one afternoon as small waves rush up and submerge her feet and sandals. She bends down, scoops some of the abundant red seaweed up on her fingertips and studies it.
"Spermothamnion," she says, identifying the genus of the algae. Later, after a little more research, she confirms its full name, spermothamnion repens.
"It's very fine and delicate, like human hair or finer," she says. "I think it's pretty."
Thurnber may be new to Rhode Island -- she moved here from California last year to become a biology professor at the University of Rhode Island -- but she's not new to seaweed.
"I've been working on algae for 10 to 15 years," she says. She jokes that since another expert retired and moved out of state, "I am now the unofficial algae expert in Rhode Island."
Thurnber, who has grants to study algae blooms in Greenwich Bay, is a special guest at Easton's on this day. The Newport Beach Commission is meeting at the beach pavilion and has invited her to talk about the red seaweed.
"I have seen the species before," she tells them, but adds that the quantity is remarkable. "I'm totally astonished."
She is then peppered with questions about the algae, as if it were a relentless foe. But to her, seaweed is clearly more friend than foe.
"I'm seaweed's biggest champion," she says. "In the ocean, it's at the bottom of the food chain."
But Fred Gauch, a Middletown retiree who shows up for the meeting and rents a seasonal bathhouse at Easton's Beach, doesn't share her enthusiasm.
"I'm about to the point where I feel like staying home," Gauch says after the meeting. "It's been getting heavier every year. . . . I don't go in the water. I don't go through the red stuff. You go through the red stuff, the bugs bite you."
"They're like shrimp," adds his wife, Sarah. "They grab on to you and pinch you."
What the Gauches describe as bugs are probably members of a family of harmless marine invertebrates called isopods, according to the staff at the Newport Exploration Center, the small aquarium at the beach pavilion run by New England Aquarium.
LAST SUMMER, Easton's was closed for seven days because of four separate episodes of contamination by fecal coliform, an indicator of human or animal waste. The previous summer, the beach was shut down for three days. Before that, it had never been closed.
The reason for the change, says Newport Recreation Director Susan Cooper, is more aggressive monitoring by the state Health Department. Testing went from monthly to weekly, and automatically upon significant rainfall.
Last year, Governor Carcieri put Easton's on a priority list of Rhode Island beaches he wants cleaned up. The governor issued the list in response to the large fish kill in Warwick's Greenwich Bay in 2003, when a bloom of a different kind of algae, fed by pollution, led to low oxygen levels in the water.
Meanwhile, the Health Department noticed something rather odd occurring at Easton's, according to David Burnett, beach program coordinator. During periods when runoff from heavy rains carried the coliform to the beach, the areas "with no seaweed would have no bacteria, and on the other side we would be getting this reading through the roof and have to close the beach," Burnett says.
"The seaweed tends to trap it," he says.
Or, as Cooper puts it, "It acts as a sponge."
So with the state's encouragement, the city began exploring its age-old problem of how to deal with the seaweed.
Early photographs of the beach -- when bathers wore gowns, not bikinis -- show seaweed, says Cooper. And studies have been undertaken over the years.
In 1995, a Newport Planning Department study repeated what has been said many times before and since -- that a rocky reef at the edges of Easton's Bay is the likely breeding ground for a variety of algae. Eventually, the spermothamnion repens breaks off, particularly in heavy surf, and is swept by the tide and the prevailing southwest winds toward Easton's Beach. And because of the fishbowl shape of the bay, the algae tends to stay put.
The 1995 study considered a variety of possible solutions: placing a barrier net offshore, dragging a net through the water to capture the algae, having trawlers or scuba divers rake the boulder fields, employing a suction pump to filter out the seaweed, and applying herbicides. For various reasons, all were dismissed.
Most Newport officials have heard of another supposed solution, too.
"Blowing up the reef," says beach manager Ray Fullerton.
No one seems to know whether the idea was serious or just the fantasy of someone fed up with seaweed.
SINCE 1995, Newport has mounted a land attack in which workers in trucks collect the seaweed.
One weapon is a newly acquired tractor equipped with a conveyor belt studded with large tines. It combs the sand for both litter and seaweed.
"It makes the beach nice and clean and fluffy," says Cooper, "like in Florida."
But raking only three or four times a week wasn't enough to keep up with the seaweed or to keep the beach looking clean. So the city is now trying to go at it seven days a week.
First, however, the city had to figure out what to do with all the seaweed once it was collected. Area farmers considered it good for composting, but were fussy about the sand and cigarette butts mixed in it, said Cooper. And burying it at the beach at the end of the season, as has been done, was frowned upon by the Health Department, especially in larger quantities.
The only other option -- since marketing it as a fertilizer or other product had been deemed impractical -- was taking it to the state Central Landfill. But the cost of dumping it at the Johnston landfill would have been prohibitive.
So the city persuaded state lawmakers to pass legislation this year that redefined seaweed as yard waste, which the landfill accepts at no charge. Then the Recreation Department borrowed $150,000 to fight seaweed over the next two years, including hiring a contractor who shows up at 4:30 a.m. most days to collect seaweed at the tide line with a loader/raker.
THEY LOOK like mounds of sand, the kind a child would form with a bucket and then flip over, except they're chest high. In reality, they're piles of seaweed that have been coated, Shake 'N Bake style, with beach sand.
On a recent summer morning, Fullerton, the beach manager, walks up to the piles, near the Middletown end of the beach. He sticks his hand in and pulls out a handful.
"See, there's seaweed mixed in, tons of it," he says.
A week later, a contractor arrives with two tractor-trailers. They are filled in just half an hour or so, but there are still dozens of piles left on the beach. It will take many trips to the landfill before the piles are gone.
"There's so much of it coming in all of the time," Fullerton says, and "if nothing is done, it starts to rot and smell, and the birds and gulls poop in it. And the people would have to walk through it to get to the water."
Gazing out at the Bay, he is pleased to see stretches where the water is green and fairly clear. That allows attendants at the two parking lots to direct beachgoers to the areas of the beach that are clear of seaweed.
There have been only a few days this summer where the seaweed is thick from end to end, says Fullerton.
"We think it's because we've thinned it out," he says. "Maybe we can get to the point where Easton's always has a clear area for everybody. A lot of times there's nowhere to swim."
The next day, however, there's no escaping the seaweed.
THE STREAM meanders across the sand and down to the edge of the surf, creating a natural boundary between the Middletown and Newport ends of the beach. Lovely to behold and fun to splash through, it is also suspected of carrying pollution to the Bay -- and into the tangle of red seaweed in the shallows.
Across Memorial Boulevard from Easton's Beach is Easton's Pond. The stream flows alongside a moat beside the pond and then runs underneath the boulevard, passing near the Atlantic Beach Club. It's suspected that storm runoff from Newport and Middletown contaminates the stream with animal waste, some from raccoons that like to nest in drainage pipes and some from geese that congregate in grassy areas.
Also, when Middletown's Wave Avenue pumping station is inundated with rainwater, it releases raw sewage into the stream, forcing the Health Department to immediately close the beach. That hasn't happened this hot, dry summer.
But Burnett says the "number one" source of pollution at Easton's is a 42-inch drainage pipe at the eastern end of the beach serving the Purgatory Road neighborhood in Middletown. Some residential sewage pipes may be tied into it, or leaking into it, he said.
Middletown voters approved a $4.5-million bond to deal with these issues, including $2 million for improvements to the pump station. Some of the money will focus on places where runoff infiltrates sewage pipes -- such as leaky manholes -- which contribute to overwhelming the station during storms.
Middletown Town Administrator Gerald Kempen says one possible solution is creating a catch basin where stormwater could be treated with intense ultraviolet light, which kills harmful bacteria.
"I think it holds a lot of hope," he says.
FULLERTON stands outside the pavilions that were destroyed and then rebuilt after Hurricane Bob in 1991.
"This beach has more to offer than any other in the state," he says -- the soft sand, no sudden drop-offs in the water, the aquarium, a playground, a skateboard park, a carousel, public transportation and a concession stand that dishes up lobster rolls, clam cakes and chowder.
Revenues total about $550,000 a year. Fullerton figures those numbers would be higher if it weren't for Easton's reputation.
"It's an absolutely perfect beach," he says, "except for the seaweed."
Richard Salit can be reached at (401) 277-7467 or by e-mail at rsalit [at] projo.com.
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