Summer Rain Ruining Our Beaches June 1, 2010 by lukesheppard

Only half of our British beaches are reaching the standards for clean water in the annual Good Beach Guide carried out by the Marine Conservation Society and it’s being blamed on our wet summers. This year more British beaches made it into the Good Beach guide. 421 beaches have been recommended this year, up from 388 in 2009. This may be a slight increase, but this is still only 55% of the UK’s bathing beaches.

People from the Marine Conservation Society’s Good Beach Guide say that there’s been a shift in the water quality trend on our beaches in the last three years. From 2001 there was a steady improvement, which peaked in the Good Beach Guide of 2006 when they commended a record 505 beaches. Since then, water quality has declined due to high volumes of rain which carry storm pollution from the sewer system, farmland and towns into the sea. The regional pattern for this rainfall means that some regions like North West England and Scotland faired worse in the 2010 guide whereas places like the Channel Isles did much better.