Water

Evaluation of Freshwater Uses and Bacteria

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control is beginning an evaluation of our freshwater water quality standards, classifications, and uses as they relate to recreation. The goal of this effort is to develop meaningful and realistic protection for recreational uses of freshwaters of the State. Recreational uses include activities with frequent full body immersion (swimming, water skiing, other whole body water-contact sports) and those with a low chance of total body immersion or ingestion of water (wading, boating, fishing).

For more than twenty-five years, DHEC has monitored the quality of our surface waters. Presently in freshwater DHEC uses fecal coliform as the bacterial indicator of recreational water quality, and all waters of the state must meet swimming standards.

Changes in science and technology now enable us to consider the use of other indicators to ensure that we are suitably protecting the citizens of South Carolina. Based on the occurrence of gastroenteritis (upset stomach, nausea, diarrhea), in 1986 the US Environmental Protection Agency documented that other bacterial indicators were more closely correlated with the occurrence of illness at freshwater lake beaches during the summer and were therefore preferable over fecal coliform bacteria.

For freshwaters EPA is recommending either Escherichia coli (E. coli) or Enterococcus, and published criteria values for each based on the summer lake data. While none of the indicator bacteria may be directly responsible for illness, they serve as indicators that other disease-causing organisms (pathogens) may be present.

In almost all cases of water-borne illnesses the pathogens come from inadequately treated waste of humans or other warm-blooded animals. Enterococcus and E. coli are more specific to sewage and fecal sources.

EPA is strongly encouraging states to replace fecal coliform bacteria in their standards with one of these alternatives. DHEC is beginning a statewide effort to collect data for a comparison of all three indicators in freshwater locations across South Carolina.

The data collected will be compared to the published criteria developed from EPA’s freshwater lake data and will be used to determine appropriate criteria for South Carolina reservoirs and flowing freshwater resources.

The intent of this change is to identify the most heavily used swimming areas in our state, focus our limited resources on providing the greatest level of protection for these areas, and to determine reasonable protection for areas infrequently used for swimming.

This is the beginning of a multi-year process. As we progress we plan to keep this website updated for future activities and sharing of information.

Stakeholder Meetings

As part of this effort, we will be holding stakeholders meetings across the state. For more information on the locations and times, and to view some of the materials to be distributed and discussed at these meetings, please follow these links.