There was good news on the local water-quality front last week: The Concerned Citizens of Montauk’s regular monitoring of area waters for the bacteria enterococcus found only one test site, out of 32 sites, with elevated levels of the potentially harmful bacteria. The probable cause? A dead bird.
The area east of the jetty at Ditch Plain in Montauk registered an entero level of 109, just above the 104 benchmark considered potentially harmful to humans.
"It was likely associated with a dead bird that had washed up next to where the sample was collected," said Jaime LeDuc, a program specialist at C.C.O.M.
Four of C.C.O.M.’s entero test sites registered medium-bacteria levels — two at Lake Montauk, another at Tuthill Pond in Montauk, and one at Accabonac Harbor in Springs. All the remaining sites that were tested had low levels of entero.
There was more good news in last week’s C.C.O.M. report: After a late-summer bloom of toxic cyanobacteria on Fort Pond, C.C.O.M. reported a significant drop-off of the nasty blue-green algae at two test sites there.
“The algae bloom in Fort Pond seems to have dissipated,” Ms. LeDuc said via email.
C.C.O.M. will continue issuing weekly reports through October 3 before going to a biweekly testing-and-reporting schedule.