"Dave.C" wrote in message
. uk...
Reported in yesterday's newspaper:
"The quality of Britain's beaches have been boosted by one of the driest
winters of the decade. The annual "Good Beach Guide", published by the
Marine Conservation Society (MCS), praised more than 500 of the 800
bathing
beaches in the UK for excellent water quality, compared with the previous
record of 453.
The driest weather in England and Wales since 1995 substantially reduced
the
amount of storm pollution in the sea during weekly tests between May and
September last year, the society said.
The North-east was pinpointed as the region with the cleanest beaches,
with
67% of all beaches recommended, an increase put down to drier weather and
infrastructure investment by water companies."
Not all bad news then.
I would expect this to be the case but I don't understand the correlation
between " a dry winter" and "tests between May and September". The
bacterial
pollution caused by any storm overflows in winter would have been
attenuated
by the following summer, I would have thought.


it may be that the dry winter reduced pollution coming down stream from land
based sources, there would be less run off and similar. A lot of this ends
up washing back around the beach

Jim Webster