The Rip Curl Planet Foundation Contributes to BWTF Rincon!

As part of a legacy project left in the wake of the Rip Curl Pro "Somewhere in Puerto Rico" event, the Rip Curl Planet Foundation contributed a small grant in the amount of $2,000 to help expand and maintain Surfrider Foundation Rincon's water quality monitoring program. The grant will be spent by obtaining another shipment of supplies to expand our monitoring sites near the three major outfalls we are assessing: Sardineras outfall in Isabela, Rio Culebrinas in Aguada, and Rio Grande del Calvache in Rincon.

Our Blue Water Task Force water quality monitoring program is a part of our greater pursuit of watershed protection, management and restoration along the Northwest Coast of Puerto Rico. Our chapter would like to thank the Rip Curl Planet Foundation for helping our chapter continue to pursue this goal.

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve Tamar at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org Surfrider Foundation Rincon

Test Results for December 7th 2010

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org
Surfrider Foundation Rincon

Test Results for November 30th 2010

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org
Surfrider Foundation Rincon

Test Results for November 24th 2010

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org
Surfrider Foundation Rincon

Test Results for November 16th 2010

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org
Surfrider Foundation Rincon

Test Results for November 9th 2010

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org
Surfrider Foundation Rincon

Test Results October 19th 2010

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org Surfrider Foundation Rincon

Test Results 6 1 2010

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org

Surfrider Foundation Rincon





posted by Wessley Merten

Test Results 5 18 2010

Steve Tamar, the director of Blue Water Task Force associated with Surfrider Foundation Rincon, loads the 'Ultimo Brinco' sample into the quanti-tray sealer machine in preparation of incubation. Samples are collected and analyzed every Tuesday by Steve and a host of other volunteers.

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org

Surfrider Foundation Rincon

Test Results 5 11 2010

We would like to thank La Paz Yoga and Pilates studio in Rincon, PR, Roderick and Beth Rogers, and Rescate Playas Isabela for becoming 'Partners for Clean Water' and 'Adopting a Beach.' Your generous donations unites us as stronger advocates for clean water and allows us to continuing sampling local and regional water sources to investigate sources of land-based sources of pollution.


For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at salvatrespalmas@surfrider.org

Surfrider Foundation Rincon

Water Quality Monitoring set to Resume in Rincon

After an extended break, due to financial constraints, our chapter is pleased to announce that with the help of the community we raised enough money to reinstate our water quality monitoring program in Rincon. We are set to resume testing on Tuesday April 27th 2010. From that Tuesday on, our chapter will be monitoring various sites in Rincon and around the west coast of Puerto Rico to locate sources of land-based sources of pollution, to notify the public about unhealthy swimming conditions, and provide our results to area agencies to assist in working towards cleaner water for everyone including Puerto Rico's precious marine resources.



Figure 1. The water quality monitoring sites are indicated by a yellow star. These sites will be monitored every Tuesday beginning on April 27th. Results will be sent out on Wednesdays.



Figure 2. Our previous 17 month water quality monitoring program, at the sites above, indicated a bimodal distribution of contamination events. The most contamination events occurred during the wet season. The sites with the most frequent contamination events were South Barrero, Rincon's public beach, and Rio Grande.

This new program will be sampling major streams in Rincon i.e Rio Grande, and Rio Grande de Calvache (el Ultimo Brinco and Almendras), as well as largely popular beaches like Steps and Rincon's public beach. All of these areas when sampled in the previous program, except for Steps beach, where the most frequently contaminated sites. Click here to search results from the previous water quality monitoring program.

Las pruebas al agua no son baratas! Si usted o su negocio se interesan en expandir nuestro programa a otros lugares de Rincon, Aguada o Anasco, al cubrir los costos de monitoreo ($50. mensual por sitio). Por favor comuniquese con nosotros acerca de nuestro programa "Adopta una Playa."

Water testing isn’t cheap! If you or your business is interested in expanding our program to others sites in Rincon, Aguada or Anasco, by covering the costs of monitoring ($50 per site/month), please contact us about our ‘Adopt a Beach’ program.


For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at stevetamar@gmail.com

ABSTRACT OF BLUE WATER TASK FORCE RINCÓN PROGRAM

The BWTF program is a volunteer-driven effort to monitor the quality of our local marine waters by regular weekly testing for enterococcus bacteria as the indicator organism of fecal contamination at the most popular beaches used by swimmers, snorkelers and surfers.
Twelve sites were chosen to be monitored for a 17 month period (Oct. 2007-Feb. 2009), with other sites added from time to time for research purposes, involving volunteers collecting 100 ml of sea water from shoreline backwash and delivering them to the Surfrider office where they were processed and bacteria counts taken using the EPA-approved IDEXX Enterolert system. The results were then disseminated by email to chapter members and published on the National BWTF database.
Very early into the program anomalous results were being found (high bacteria counts detected when no local rainfall was recorded) and so volunteers also began making observations of wind speed & direction, wave height & direction, shore current speed & direction, water clarity and visible shoreline changes, in an effort to determine the bacteria source. This aspect of the program has only been moderately successful so far, in that some intriguing patterns are beginning to develop but are not yet confirmed.
Basic program statistics: Duration: Weekly sampling was carried out for 17 consecutive months, for a total of 74 collection dates. Volunteers collected a total of 838 water samples from Rincón beaches following standard BWTF protocols and equipment. Of these, 631 samples resulted in 0 MPN (Most Probable Number of enterococcus bacteria) counts after testing. A total of 2,600 volunteers hours were logged in the collection, transportation, and lab processing of the water samples, and also includes the time necessary for record keeping and publishing the weekly results to the internet or by email.
Basic program findings, initial phase: In general Rincón enjoys extremely good water quality, with approximately 60% of test dates showing all beaches below the ‘safe’ (as defined by US EPA and PR Junta de Calidad Ambiental standards) level of 35 bacteria per sample. Thus no individual beach was found to be consistently contaminated. Approximately 10% of test dates showed ‘unsafe’ (as defined by EPA) bacteria levels greater than 104 bacteria per sample for at least half of the sites, with 50% of these dates being correlated to locally heavy rains. Therefore approximately 5% of the testing dates showed unsafe bacteria levels at most or all of the sites with no local rain recorded. Since Rincón has no major river outflow nor a Waste Water Treatment Plant (the two most usual sources of fecal contamination) capable of contaminating the entire 12 mile monitoring area, the conclusion is that this bacterial contamination is coming into our area from elsewhere. This must be regarded as a very tentative conclusion at this time, since the IDEXX test method (and thus the entire BWTF program) has a 5% margin of error which we have not yet exceeded regarding these large scale contamination events. Another conclusion is that, since by conventional reasoning enterococcus bacteria remain viable in open marine systems for at least 72 hrs, the fact that we most frequently found no significant bacteria level increase 24 hrs after local rainfall indicates that there is some mechanism in our local area (either physical or biological) that neutralizes or removes this bacteria relatively quickly. Whatever the mechanism, it has resulted in no seasonal fluctuations in bacterial levels being detected in the 17 month study.
Obviously, further monitoring and research will need to be done to even begin to answer the questions raised by these findings.

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at stevetamar@gmail.com

Blue Water Task Force Summary

The BWTF program is designed to verify water quality in the coastal Rincón area by testing for fecal bacteria contamination on a continuing weekly basis at popular swimming and surfing beaches. As more data is collected during the program attempts will be made to identify the source(s) of this contamination and to recommend steps to alleviate this problem. Certainly in the larger view the program seeks to educate the public about the potential health hazards of water pollution, and to collaborate with other environmental and community groups about these issues.

For more information, or to volunteer to assist with this program, please contact Steve at stevetamar@gmail.com