Water testing at provincial beaches smart move: Corbett

New River Beach, New Brunswick.

Our Executive Director, Lois Corbett, spoke with CBC News about the provincial government’s recent announcement to expand water quality testing to eight provincial beaches in New Brunswick.

“What it does is it gives people — moms and dads, and grandmothers and grandfathers — some assurance that when the children ask them to go swimming today because it’s a hot day and they need to cool down, that they can read online before they go to the great New Brunswick beaches, that it’s indeed safe enough,” Corbett said.

Corbett was on the CBC News: New Brunswick at 6 broadcast on May 18 (story begins around the 1-minute mark).

In 2016, the provincial government failed to inform the public of hazardous fecal bacteria levels in the water at Parlee Beach. Based on the protocol established for Murray and Parlee Beaches in 2017, testing has now been expanded to all provincial park beaches in the province, including Mactaquac Beach, New River, Mount Carleton, Oak Bay, Miscou and Val-Comeau Beach.

Protocol requires five water samples from each beach to be sent to a lab for testing, where the medical health officer can determine whether the water is safe for swimming or not.

The province will post the results online, here.

“It’s important that the health of young people and our senior citizens are protected at every beach,” Corbett told CBC.

She said that the protocol is good news for New Brunswick beaches, but, “the next step, of course, is to go beyond information to make sure that water quality is protected… make sure there’s no E. coli, no poop in our swimming waters to start with.”

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