Generally, I make a point of keeping up with the local news wherever I am. Hence my occasional reports in this venue from Memphis, or from up in PA (where over the weekend the biggest news seemed to be the question of whether Joe Paterno would retire).
Today, I’m at the beach in SC, where I am greeted by this lovely news in The Sun News:
South Carolina’s beaches, including those in Horry and Georgetown
counties, are the sixth most polluted in the nation, according to a
report released Tuesday by a nonprofit environmental group.Local
and state experts denounced the report, saying area beaches are safe.
Officials with Horry County, North Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Beach and the
state Department of Natural Resources all complained of inaccuracies
and misinterpretation of data in the National Resources Defense
Council’s report….
That second paragraph makes me feel SO much better, doesn’t it you? Well, of course YOU feel better; you’re not at the beach, are you?
As I left to come to my favorite blogging spot at the beach, I told my daughter not to go near the water until I got back. I told her it was because of the buddy system of aquatic safety. I didn’t want to freak her out totally.
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DHEC itself issued a report in the early 1980s saying the Grand Strand was at capacity for absorbing treated sewerage.
Ahhh, Benjamin’s Bagels. Been at least two weeks since I was in Surfside…gotta head back soon.
If you want a clean beach, consider Hunting Island State Park. It’s also less crowded.
Actually, Tim, I’m at Benjamin’s brother business — Jacob’s Java. It’s a front operation for the bakery. Zoning required that they deal with the public, so they put this coffee shop in front.
It’s actually pretty popular now, going by the last couple of times I’ve been in here.
If you read the report, Hunting Island State Park had bacteria levels just as high as Surfside, Hilton Head, North Myrtle, Myrtle, etc.
I hope the state of SC gets their act together with stormwater runoff regulations. It is a major problem here in coastal North Carolina.
Interesting, Lee, that DHEC was on to this back in the eighties…but then the Burrows-Chapin clowns have been running MB for years. Then they want to come north and develop the Congaree flood plain into a Green Diamond. I hope I am not alone in my concerns on how Cayce shapes it’s own future with it’s takeover of the river. Don’t fret, Brad, we’re not doing much swimming up here either – the lower Saluda is off-limts for awhile too.
Brad,
Hope you enjoyed your trip to the beach.
Yeah, Jacob’s is a great place.
As reported and available on our Web site at http://www.scdhec.gov, South Carolina’s beaches are not the worst in the Southeast. We pointed it out and got the corrections made.
We post the results of ocean water testing at the beach during the season from May 15 to October 15. This is posted on a monthly basis so everyone can check to see whether there have been or any current advisories for areas along our beaches.
We’re not sure what happened once we uploaded our 2007 data to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency but we’re glad the Natural Resources Defense Council corrected the mistakes in their report.
We’ve invited the authors of the report and leadership of the NRDC to visit our beautiful beaches. We’ll even meet ’em for a bagel and a cup.
If we drill for oil off the coast maybe we can have the number 1 most polluted beaches in the country.
There are thousands of offshore wells on the West Coast and Gulf Coast.
There hasn’t been a significant oil spill for a US coastal drilling rig since the 1960s, and no tanker oil spill since one off California in 1968.
The Elf Aquitane spill in the Gulf in 1991 was contained by Exxon crews, and the only other large spill was by Pemex, the Mexican government oil company.
Pelosi, Feinstein and Waxman can block drilling and refineries for the rest of America, because California is covered up with oil wells, offshore rigs and refineries.
I guess the Exxon Valdez catastrophe somehow doesn’t qualify as a tanker oil spill in the sick mind of Lee Muller.
Using the same logic we could make other claims:
There hasn’t been an assasination of an American president since Abraham Lincoln.
There hasn’t been a significant terrorist attack since the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993.
No major war has been fought in Europe since 1918.
There has not been a single natural disaster in the United States since Hurricane Camile in 1969.
Really Lee. Even for you that claim (about the tanker spills) is assinine.
Speaking of the Exxon Valdez, this story just makes me sick. The U.S. Supreme Court is just plain evil. From Seattlepi.com:
Exxon sees record profits, fishermen won’t
ExxonMobil owns the record for at least the top six most-profitable quarters for a U.S. company, as well as the largest annual profit.
Last month, a $2.5 billion settlement awarded by a jury to the fishermen, Alaska natives, fish processors and business owners was slashed by the highest court in the land to $500 million.
The Exxon Valdez accident did not occur off the West Coast, East Coast or Gulf Coast of the lower 48 states, but off Alaska.
It was caused by a drunk captain, who was fired but reinstated by the feds, with back pay. Exxon long ago paid to clean up the spill and compensate everyone in the area, but there is an industry of phony environmentalists and others milking it.
Bottom lin: oil drilling and shipping is very accident-free, as are all chemical and nuclear operations in the USA.
If Obama stole all of Exxon-Mobil’s profit and used it to reduce gasolinen prices, the retail price would only fall 9 cents per gallon.
Obama says tapping ANWR’s billions of barrels of oil wouldn’t make any difference, but yesterday says he would use up 70,000,000 barrels of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in order to reduce gasoline prices ( by how much? He has no clue.)
Lee, do you enjoy coming across as a stupid idiot. Because that’s exactly how you come across. You claim there has not been an oil tanker spill since 1968. You put no restrictions on where that occurred. It could have occurred anywhere based on what you claimed. To exclude Alaska is just simply assinine. If you enjoy being a stupid dumbass just keep right on making these ridiculous claims. Frankly it’s a bit of fun to see just how stupid folks on the right can be.