June 30, 2008

LEGISLATOR REYNOLDS ANNOUNCES APPROVAL OF GRANT TO ERIE COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT

Erie County Legislator Robert B. Reynolds announced today that the Erie County Legislature recently approved a grant awarded to the Erie County Health Department from the New York State Health Department in the amount of $35,800 for the period of 10/1/07 to 9/30/09 to conduct additional beach sanitary surveys.

This includes extensive water quality sampling at Wendt Beach, Hamburg Town Beach, at several neighboring streams, additional work at Evans Town Beach and at Lake Erie Beach including Muddy Creek. This is a systematic approach to identifying point sources of bacterial contamination and differentiates between human and non-human sources of bacterial contamination.

"Over the last few years, several Lake Erie beaches have been closed 20-30 percent of the time during our short swimming season," Legislator Reynolds said. "This is clearly unacceptable and the time has come to implement a program to identify and remediate the contamination responsible for these closures."

"This grant also includes funding for the equipment to establish small modular networked weather stations to provide accurate, timely, and localized rainfall data for the beaches and the watersheds of neighboring streams to allow better implantation of the pre-emptive closing procedure after rain events and reduce unnecessary closures," Legislator Reynolds added.

Should you have questions concerning this grant, please contact the Office of the Erie County Health Department at 858-6976 or Erie County Legislator Bob Reynolds' District Office at 649-2640.

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