"Presently, the Rhode Island Department of Health does not advise individuals to swim, wade or have any contact with the water."

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, August 21, 2005

BY ELIZABETH GUDRAIS
Journal Staff Writer

WARWICK -- On a recent Saturday when the temperature in Providence reached 99 degrees, Conimicut Point Beach was a pleasant place to be.

Among the attractions: A strong sea breeze and a view of a quaint New England landscape -- Conimicut Light and Warwick Neck -- across the water.

So why were there only 10 people on the beach?

It might have had something to do with the sign, posted in English and Spanish, at the parking lot entrance: "Presently, the Rhode Island Department of Health does not advise individuals to swim, wade or have any contact with the water."

Conimicut Point was closed for swimming again. It was the fifth time this summer.

The beach has been closed 18 days so far this summer, accounting for half of the closure days at the state's beaches.

As the farthest north licensed swimming beach on Narragansett Bay, Conimicut Point is "marginal to begin with," says Ernest Julian, chief of the state Department of Health's Office of Food Protection, which oversees recreational facilities as well as restaurants.

At the Bay's southern end, in places such as Newport, Jamestown and Narragansett, the Bay widens enough that pollutants disperse easily. And anywhere farther north than Conimicut Point -- for instance, Gaspee Point in Warwick, East Providence's Crescent Park and Sabin Point, India Point in Providence -- common sense says you don't go in the water. (As an added reminder, the Department of Health doesn't license those beaches for swimming.)

The reason is simple, and persuasive. Every time it rains, millions of gallons of untreated sewage spill into the Bay from the state's overloaded public sewer system.

Conimicut Point is particularly ill-situated to stay clean: It juts out into the Bay, directly across the path of water emptying from the Providence and Seekonk Rivers. Barrington Town Beach, directly across from Conimicut Point, occupies a recessed, south-facing position and almost never closes.

Three times a week, the Department of Health tests the water at beaches in the upper Bay -- everything north of Prudence Island -- for bacterial contamination. (Beaches farther south are sampled less frequently.) Still, by the time the public gets word of a beach closure, it's been at least one day -- and possibly as many as four -- since the contamination happened. That's up to four days of swimmers frolicking in bacteria-laden waters.

So, why would anyone swim at Conimicut Point in the first place?

FOR MANY, the answer is that they wouldn't.

"I wouldn't swim here on its best day," said Mike Dorazio, a Warwick resident who fishes at Conimicut Point regularly. "I wouldn't even go barefoot here."

"We come to catch a breeze," said Brenda Russo, a bikini-clad Warwick resident sunbathing with two girlfriends. "Not necessarily to swim. We just like the view."

Others sunbathing and fishing there on that recent, oppressively hot Saturday agreed. One man said he wouldn't go in the water no matter how hot it got; for another woman, the suggestion she might swim there caused her eyebrows to shoot up in alarm.

Even the lifeguards don't go in unless they have to. Last weekend, Bill McNamara and Katie Kearns were happy to perch on their chairs and remind people to stay out of the water.

The beach is busy when it's open, Kearns said. Lots of families swim there. She doesn't understand it.

"Not me personally, I wouldn't swim in it," she said.

"I'd go kayaking here," McNamara said. "Not swimming."

ON THAT same Saturday, it was a different story on the north side of the point, where no lifeguards kept watch.

David Reyes, of Providence, swam with his wife and three children, the youngest still a toddler.

Reyes said he hadn't known the beach was closed for swimming, but the news didn't stop the family from splashing and thrashing about in the water.

Mike and Annie Giuliano, of Barrington, were also unaware of the closure. They'd come by boat from Bullock Point, in East Providence, so had missed the warning sign in the parking lot.

News of the elevated bacteria count didn't seem to bother them. Mike, a professional shellfisherman and tugboat captain, noted that the shellfishing beds off Conimicut Point remained open, so the water quality couldn't be too bad.

"We'd better wash off when we get home," Annie said with a matter-of-fact tone as her husband dove back into the water, sunscreen-smeared nose first.

DAVID BURNETT, coordinator of the state Department of Health's beach-monitoring program, said he would "absolutely" swim at Conimicut Point when it's open.

Conimicut's on-again, off-again closure record might give beachgoers whiplash, but it actually bodes well for the Bay's health.

In late June and early July, in a period of three weeks, the beach closed and reopened four times. "That tells us that it's cleaning out really quickly, within a tidal cycle or two," Burnett said.

The Health Department tests for enterococci, a bacterium found in fecal matter and also a reliable indicator of other harmful bacteria, viruses and protozoa -- the stuff that will give you an upset stomach, or worse, if it's in water you accidentally swallow while swimming.

Department interns take 3,000 samples each summer, donning waders and slogging in to knee-deep level, then immersing a sterilized bottle the size of a soda can a foot below the surface. The bottles go into a cooler, which goes to a testing lab on Orms Street, in Providence. A beach closes whenever a sample finds more than 104 enterococci per 100 milliliters of water.

The culprit is usually rainfall. As little as a half-inch of rain pushes the state's sewer system over its limit, sending untreated sewage into the Bay. The Narragansett Bay Commission's combined sewer-overflow project, expected to cost $318 million, is designed to address that. Until it does, though, the number of beach-closure days in a year will correlate closely with the amount of rain that falls.

Each time a single beach is closed for one day, that's a beach-closure day. If five beaches are closed at the same time, one calendar day equals five beach-closure days.

The dry weather this year has meant relatively few beach-closure days. As of Friday, three quarters of the way through beach season, there had been only 36.

Last year, an average rainfall year, there were 122, five of them at Conimicut Point. And in 2003, when constant rainstorms kept beaches closed, the total was a whopping 454 -- and 67 at Conimicut -- over the course of a three-month beach season. "It was just a vicious, never-ending cycle," Burnett said.

Conimicut Point's closures earlier in the season followed rainstorms. The most recent closure was harder to explain. "This one's kind of a mystery to us at this point," Burnett said.

When the cause isn't rain, Julian and Burnett become detectives. Is it a spill at a nearby marina? A cracked sewer pipe? An algal bloom? A flock of birds that landed and left behind a bacteria-laden mess?

They may never know -- and in this case, it may not matter. A sample taken Monday showed the water at Conimicut Point was safe for swimming. The beach reopened Tuesday.

Digital Extra: Check the state Department of Health's latest list of beach closings and advisories, at:

http://www.ribeaches.org/closures.cfm