South Shore Park beach may move to avoid E. coli, closings
Consultants propose four options for cleaner water farther south
If you can’t bring clean water to the beach, then bring the beach to clean water.
That is how Milwaukee County officials have decided to deal with the chronically contaminated beach at South Shore Park.
With a history of being closed many days of each summer because high levels of E. coli bacteria in the water there indicate it is unsafe for swimming, the beach should be relocated farther south in the park along the Lake Michigan shoreline, officials said.
This year, the beach was closed or under an adviso-
ry to swim at your own risk because of high bacteria levels on 57 of 97 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day, according to the Milwaukee Health Department.
The yellow sign posted on advisory days states: “Swimming in this water could make you sick.”
Though the work of creating a new beach might be a few years away, it could not come soon enough for Manuel Canales, a Bay View neighborhood resident.
Canales and his two sons, Christian and Victor, were at the park every day of the past week to take advantage of the warm weather.
“We don’t swim here because of the many advisories for E. coli,” he said Thursday while his sons played on a stretch of shore covered with small stones south of the beach.
Ben Hall and his three children, all in swimsuits, were at the beach Thursday for a late afternoon dip. The Milwaukee Health Department stops posting advisories or beach closed signs after Labor Day so none of the families at the beach Thursday knew the water quality at that time.
“We walk to the park three to five times every week,” Hall said. “That’s why we live in Bay View. That’s what holds us here.”
“I’d love to see a beach with better water quality,” he said.
Most of the summer, the Hall family heeded advisories and closings and walked south along the shoreline to a sandy stretch of beach south of Texas Avenue if they wanted to swim, he said.
Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic has been pushing for South Shore Park improvements since she was first elected in 2004. She describes the shoreline park with its bluff views of the lake as “a regional asset.”
Her next goal, simply stated, is “that my children and the people of this neighborhood could swim at the beach,” Dimitrijevic said. “That is the missing piece for this park.”
There is little water circulation next to the current beach since it is hemmed in by an offshore breakwater to the east and the South Shore Yacht Club to the north. Bacteria and other pathogens from droppings of gulls and geese accumulate on beach sand as well as a large parking lot serving the marina and a public boat launch.
Each rainstorm rinses bacteria off the land and into the shallow water in front of the beach, and there is little current to move the contaminants out quickly.
When tests find high levels of E. coli bacteria in water samples, that is a proven indicator that fecal pollutants from the birds also are present.
Among the symptoms of exposure to illness-causing bacteria and other microbes that might be present: upset stomach, nausea, vomiting, headaches, fever, and infections of the eye, ear and throat.
One year ago, the county hired SmithGroup, a nationwide consulting firm with an office in Madison, to study beach improvements that would yield better water quality and significantly reduce beach closings, Parks Director Guy Smith said.
In January of this year, the consultants reported that it would not be possible to achieve those goals at the current beach location, so they started looking down the shoreline.
SmithGroup has proposed four options. Each is south of the current beach and closer to an opening in the offshore breakwater, where waves push through and stir up the water.
Preliminary cost estimates run from $2.9 million up to $4.3 million, according to consultants.
Two alternatives would start where the beach now ends. One of them is more than double the length of the other. Each would provide a beach in front of the pavilion and its bathrooms.
The other two options start south of the pavilion where an old jetty extends into the lake and marks the beginning of a rocky stretch of shoreline. That is where the Canales boys on Thursday built a triangle-shaped lean-to with driftwood.
Wave energy and water circulation are the best here because this location is closest to the opening in the breakwater, according to the consultants.
Water quality studies since 2001 by the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found that E. coli levels in the water are 40 times lower on average at this stretch of rocky shoreline than at the current beach, said Sandra McLellan, a researcher and professor at the school.
The county’s consultants proposed building new jetties on both ends of a 560-foot-wide beach that could be created here.
The county parks department will publish a report on the beach relocation study by the end of this year that will include a recommended alternative, parks landscape architect Therese Gripentrog said.
Dimitrijevic expects the County Board to take action on the recommendation early in 2019 so the county could seek federal and state grant funds to pay up to 100% of the costs for relocating the beach, she said.