Health unit starts testing beaches’ water

Inspectors from Peterborough Public Health began sampling water quality of local beaches on Monday.

Public beaches in the city and county and Hiawatha and Curve Lake First Nations will be regularly tested to ensure water quality conditions are safe for recreational use.

The two public beaches in the city — Rogers Cove and Beavermead — will be sampled by inspectors at least once each business day until August.

Public beaches in Peterborough County will be sampled at least once every week, except for Belmont Lake Beach, Chandos Beach, Kasshabog Lake Beach, Quarry Bay Beach and White’s Beach, which are sampled at least once in June, July and August.

Water samples will be submitted to the PPH Ontario Laboratory for bacteriological analysis.

They will be tested for E. coli bacteria — an indicator of fecal contamination in the water.

It takes about 24 hours for PPH to receive and analyze the water quality results from the lab.

Beaches will be posted as unsafe for recreational use, including swimming, when E. coli levels exceed 100 E. coli cfu per 100 ml of water.

When this happens, PPH will post signs around the beach area to inform the public not to come into contact with the water as it is a potential threat to human health.

“Beach closures are rare thankfully and only occur when there’s been a serious incident such as a toxic spill or due to a blue-green algae bloom,” Brittany Cadence, communications manager at PPH, stated in a news release.

“Before you head out to any public beach, we encourage you to visit our website,” she said.

“There, you’ll be able to see if the water quality is safe or unsafe because of high bacteria levels or if the beach is closed all together because of some other significant risk to human health.”

For beach water quality updates visit www.peterboroughpublichealth.ca or follow @Ptbohealth on Twitter.