Runoff Carrying Bacteria Is Polluting Havens Beach In Sag Harbor, Water Expert Says After Study

Runoff that collects on Bay Street and is delivered through a drain and a ditch to Havens Beach consistently raised fecal coliform levels above safe limits for swimming and shellfishing during the summer season in 2021.

That’s according to a report presented on April 7 to the Harbor Committee of Sag Harbor by Dr. Christopher Gobler, chairman of the Coastal Ecology and Conservation Department at the Stony Brook School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

Mary Ann Eddy, chairwoman of the Harbor Committee, who spearheaded the annual village water quality testing initiative conducted by Gobler and his graduate students, said the data made it clear that street runoff is the culprit polluting the waters of Havens Beach.

“There have been different suppositions about where the fecal coliform and Enterococcus bacteria were coming from,” she noted, “but I think this really nails it.”

Very little human waste is present in the runoff, which flows from a wide upland area and collects on Bay Street, Gobler said. According to tracing results, birds are the greatest source, by far, with dogs and small mammals in a distant second place. A small amount of waste comes from deer, he said.

Presenting data from his latest annual Sag Harbor water quality survey, Gobler said the fecal coliform levels in the outfall pipe that feeds runoff onto Havens Beach are “very, very high.”

They also were high at sampling points on both sides of a bacterial sponge filtration system installed in 2013 and upgraded in 2019. The high coliform levels persist along the beach, he said, especially west of the pool — a particular concern for swimmers.

The evidence refutes claims the pollution comes from boaters illegally discharging septic waste into the bay waters. Gobler’s data shows little evidence of human waste, with none at all traced at four of seven Havens Beach sampling sites and very little at the other three.

Gobler’s 80-minute presentation, which covered water quality sampling at four other sites along the Sag Harbor waterfront, as well as three fresh ponds, can be seen beginning about one hour into the YouTube recording of the April 7 Harbor Committee meeting.

Gobler has been sampling Sag Harbor’s waters since 2018, with ever increasing depth and detail.

Asked by Harbor Committee member Lilee Fell what was “the best way to mitigate” the pollution problem at Havens Beach, Gobler said, “In a perfect world, that would be some sort of alternative hydraulic routine” that would slow down the runoff that is flowing into the ditch or sump and onto the beach, allowing it to first collect and filter through “wetlands” designed to “hold it.”

“Right now, the whole system operates on gravity, so the beach is at the will of the rainfall,” Gobler said.

Village Trustee Aiden Corish welcomed the data, saying it should boost the village’s chances of winning a state grant to study and remediate pollution at Havens Beach when it reapplies for the funding this year. Last year, the state turned the village down, he said.

Corish said one idea the village is studying is converting the drainage system into a “meandering stream” with adjacent wetlands — which Fell noted used to be a natural feature of the site before it was filled with dredge spoil decades ago.

“The data that’s been generated here should help push that proposal to the top of the pile,” Gobler said. “Certainly the need is quite obvious now.”

He said “mitigating surface runoff” reaching Havens Beach to reduce fecal coliform bacteria levels “should be a priority” for the village.

Recreating a meandering stream and wetland at the site isn’t a new idea. In 2011, a village plan for it was rejected largely because neighbors feared it would attract mosquitoes.

No human waste was traced in the waters along Havens Beach to the west, to the east or opposite the beach collecting pool. None was traced either in the pipe that feeds runoff in the sump into the filtration system.

Speaking of the filtration system, Harbor Committee member John Parker said, “It looks to me like they may not be doing the job because you’re getting bacteria levels” from samples taken “before and after the sponges, which are similar.”

Gobler agreed the filtration system isn’t “100 percent effective.”

Similarly high levels of bacteria traced to birds was found in the sampling site labeled “Beacon,” off West Water Street, where there is an outflow into the bay from a system that relies on a pump to collect runoff from a wide, low-lying area. Fecal coliform levels from bird waste were “very high all across the board” there, Gobler said.

He noted that Windmill Beach is “a concern” because its name implies swimming is encouraged there. On three sampling dates last season, Enterococcus levels there exceeded the maximum set by the state for safe swimming. At the Beacon, he said, there were “many dates” when the data was “above standard,” he said.

Besides reducing runoff reaching Havens Beach at a top priority because “there is swimming and shellfishing there,” Gobler listed as “management options” eliminating waste discharges at marinas, which he called “a potential source of fecal bacteria.”

“If there is any illicit discharge, obviously that would want to be minimized,” he said.

Also, he said swimming should not be allowed at Windmill Beach or in the inner harbor.