Thursday, May 10, 2012

perigee tide issues

Last year in Sepatember there was a perigee tide that i had not seen previously and the predicted tide hieght was greater than 9.3 feet.
We had samples beaches just as the tide was ebbing and found high bacteria counts.
Now this was something that i had expected with other high tides, but not found in much significants and so this was the first and only perigee tide that i had found what was suspected.
There were no duplications of the tide or of the results.
The high tide this year occured past midnight and sampling was done at incoming tide after the low.
There was nothing, no bacteria.
The situation remains unproven, but it also begs the question on how long such an effect might last?
The rainfall issue (washing bacteria into the Sound) was carefully studied and we discovered that 24 hours was always enough, but 12 hours was not enough.
This tide will not be repeated anytime soon (at least till after 2013 is over) and i will not be the one to find the issues and the particulars.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

on the other hand...

below the merit parkway, in older homes, with no builder dumps, with no city dump...
the presence of pesticides was 25%.
This is clear support for the idea that they can be found in any well, any where and have more to do with how we used and discarded the pesticides when they were still legal.
This has been my statement all along.
Now it is up to the other places with wells and surburbia to start testing.

Monday, May 7, 2012

alternate explainations

based on information that i had from quarterly tests from the CT DEP (now DEEP), i had postulated that a significant rain after an exteneded low rain period might give false negative results for pesticides.
There were logical reasons for this, particularly if the contamination was coming from a "deep" source.
Samples taken 2 weeks ago, during the 5 day period after heavy rains that i was concerned with, gave several samples with both dieldren and chlordane. 
One would have been sufficient to disprove the theory.
Before this i only had one sample that fit the criteria. 
What is most sad about this is that it now sheds a bad light on HOW the samples were collected.
The DEP had made errors previously (and corrected them) and i was hoping this was not the case, but it appears it probably is the case and that error in sample handling might cause more issues than rain.