The EPA has set new standards for allowable sickness caused from swimming, boating, or surfing at the nation’s oceans and Great Lakes —it’s now one in 28 people. The old standard, which dates all the way to 1986, said that eight cases of illness per 1,000 was a reasonable benchmark. The new math works out as nearly five times as many people getting sick.

The reason that EPA would allow more people to get ill with fun stuff like e. coli is that the $10 million in grants it gives each year to state and local agencies in coastal and Great Lakes states to test for tainted water is too costly and has in the Obama administration’s latest proposed budget, would be cut for 2013. This comes even as the EPA is boasting about the monitoring that resulted from the Beach Act of 2000, saying “the number of monitored beaches has more than tripled to more than 3,600 in 2010.”

But that was under the prior guidelines, which helped local agencies fund water quality tests and provided incentives for them to post when bacteria levels became dangerous and water quality was compromised or contaminated. California and Florida received the most grant funding (find the state-by-state breakdown here; PDF) but considering the coastal tourism biz is estimated at an annual figure of $60 billion and 1.8 million jobs, according to the Monterey Institute of International Studies, we’re talking pennies per ocean-goer to keep beaches safer.

Some states, like California, are likely to bend over backwards to protect beaches; even last year, in the midst of a backbreaking budget crisis, Gov. Jerry Brown restored funding to the water board to ensure more consistent funding.

But Jon Devine, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s water program, told the Los Angeles Times that not all states are going to go out of their way to protect their beaches or even to notify beachgoers that the water isn’t safe or monitored.

What’s most alarming is that even with the prior standards, according to the NRDC, there were 24,091 beach closures and advisories for dirty water in the U.S. last year. The new proposal, as it presently stands, would let states monitor for bacteria over a 90-day period, which basically means that spikes that could cause illness might be averaged out over the course of a three-month window — and dangerous conditions wouldn’t necessarily be flagged when they should. California has a tougher standard, measuring in 30-day windows, and some other states do as well, but the lack of a federal requirement won’t prevent backsliding or do anything to protect unwitting tourists, daily surfers, and swimmers from hazards like storm water runoff that can sweep sewage and pesticides out to sea.

Photo by Shutterstock. Environmental coverage made possible in part by support from Patagonia. For information on Patagonia and its environmental efforts, visit www.patagonia.com.

Tagged as: beach, environment, national parks, oceans, paddling, protection, surfing