LYNN, Mass. — The Commonwealth has seen so much rain recently when we finally get a nice day of sunshine and warmer temperatures, a lot of folks head to their area beaches to cool off.
But officials are advising the public not to swim the day after heavy rain.
“It’s gonna trigger the sewer overflows and you’re just gonna have the influence of sewage which creates bacteria and it’s going to be not advisable to swim on those days,” said Chris Mancini, Executive Director of Save the Harbor/Save the Bay.
Flags line Kings Beach in Lynn to advise people not to swim, but the flags and signs aren’t always enough.
Boston 25 Meteorologist Vicki Graf spoke with some locals who take it very seriously.
“There’s definitely raw sewage going into the water and I’m just not comfortable down here,” one man said.
The signs can get confusing for beachgoers.
“There’s so many different flags, so many things to worry about… People might make a different decision if it said, there’s sewage in the water. Like - you flushed your toilet and now it’s here,” Mancini said, which creates a public health issue when people do go swimming.
“And yeah, you can get rashes, you can get eye infections, stomach aches,“ he continued. After heavy rain, it can take a day to get test results back on how safe the water is.
“Say this morning you collect a sample after yesterday’s rain, we’re not going to get that result until tomorrow. So tomorrow, you might see a lot of beach closures when actually, a lot of those beaches are clean again.”
Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy solution.
“Spend hundreds of millions of dollars, remove the pipes from the waterfront, and send them to the sewage treatment plant,” Mancini said. “That’s really effective, that’s also very expensive and very disruptive.”
Until there is a solution, the easy rule of thumb is to not swim in most local beaches until at least 48 hours after a heavy rain event.
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