Water Testing
County's data
Coalitions data
Heroy's Pond
Jumping Brook
Shark River
Lake Alberta
Water Monitoring
The Coalition monitors the water in a number of spots on the Shark River and it's tributaries several times a week for fecal coliform, nitrogen and dissolved oxygen.
The reason we started this testing was to determine the sources of fecal coliform that were entering the river and eliminate them if possible. We suspected that a significant percentage of the fecal E. coli entering the river was human.
People are getting sick by coming in contact with the water through swimming and boating or consuming crabs or clams from the river. (crabbing is legal, clamming is illegal)
Our testing methods,times and results can be viewed on this page and connecting pages.
All testing is conducted by a certifed laboratory.
About fecal bacteria
Fecal coliform and enterococcus bacteria are found in the feces of mammals and birds. They are not harmful to humans but are used as an indicator to detect the presence of harmful pathogens like typhoid fever, hepatitis, gastroenteritis, dysentery and ear infections as well as parasites.
When bacteria levels exceed the state level of 104 colonies per 100-mils for enterococcus or 200 colonies per 100-mil sample there is a greater chance that harmful pathogens are present and the water becomes unsafe for swimming.
Bacteria testing is easy and inexpensive to perform. The only draw back is the test takes 22-24hrs to complete. This means you're always looking at yesterday's results.
To do a test, a 100-mil water sample (about 8 oz's) is taken from a site and brought to the lab. The sample is poured through a membrane filter and the fecal coliform gets caught on the filter. The filter is then soaked in a solution and incubated for 22-24hrs.
The fecal coliform shows up as blue dots or colonies on the filter. Count the dots and that's the count per 100-mil sample.
Incubated filters look like this:
County data
The Monmouth County Board of Health also monitors the river for fecal coliform. Their tests are part of the State Cooperative Coastal Monitoring Program.
They check the water on Mondays from May to September. They take samples at two spots, the L St. Beach in Belmar, memorial beach in Neptune City and the Shark River Hills Beach and Yacht Club.
The County's data indicates, in a year over year comparison, that the fecal coliform levels have risen significantly. On two occasions in 2001, August 13 and Sept. 4 the levels exceeded 2500 colonies per 100-mil sample. That's twelve times the beach closure rate!
Click here to view the County's data.
Coalition data
Our data which can be viewed here Coalitions Data indicates a number of problem areas exist which are caused by the tributaries to the river. The bay water itself is clean on the incoming tide because it's mostly ocean water. The outgoing tide brings in more fouled tributary water and rain events pollute the entire river regardless of tide.
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