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tools are more protective of human health, despite the cost to State and local 

 governments. New legislation should consider the funding burden on State and 

 local governments to adopt any new beach criteria, monitoring methods, closure 

 requirements, and the seasonal beach monitoring implementation. A 1993 report 

 by the Natural Resources Defense Council shows that current costs, from a 

 sampling of States and counties, to conduct microbiological monitoring programs, 

 range from $541 to $7,500 per mile of beach, annually. 



A shortcoming of current methods to detect microbial pathogens is that they 

 all require 24 hours or longer to provide results. This analysis period reduces the 

 ability to respond in a timely fashion with closures or other types of notification to 

 protect recreational users. There are some existing efforts to develop new 

 microbial indicators to shorten the required monitoring time. 



We also have identified the need to explore other indicator organisms and 

 supplemental indicator systems such as rainfall events during which pollutants can 

 be washed into recreational waters. With these supplemental methods we hope to 

 shorten the detection time, broaden the range of fecal pathogens that can be 

 monitored, and provide a capability to monitor the non-fecal pathogen risks. Many 

 of these efforts may require development and standardization of new sampling and 

 analysis methods, and the subsequent verification of their relationships to the 

 incidence of disease. The time and expense required to establish this information 

 would be considerable and constitute a significant EPA research program. It is 

 estimated that final comprehensive EPA standards, monitoring methods, and 



