How Clean Is The Water At Chicago’s Beaches?

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s that time of the year where we can all finally hit the beach. But our listeners have a lot of questions about Chicago’s beaches. Like, how clean is the water? How much poop is in there? And why are some flotation devices banned? Curious City’s Monica Eng puts on her sun visor and a good deal of sunscreen and tracks down the answers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Curious City reporter Monica Eng, and I love heading to Chicago beaches in the summer.
0:10.2	So does Reagan Burke, who lives on the Gold Coast.
0:13.4	She used to walk down to Oak Street Beach every morning with her dog Usher to get some exercise and play in the water.
0:19.4	That is, until one day.
0:20.7	I was taking my dog to the beach, and a lifeguard came up to me and play in the water. That is until one day.
0:24.3	I was taking my dog to the beach, and a lifeguard came up to me and said,
0:26.3	get your dog out of the water.
0:28.5	There's E. coli.
0:32.6	That's when the city used to close beaches when E. coli levels,
0:35.5	showing feces and the water, got too high.
0:38.7	In the early 2000s, they really reported that every day.
0:43.5	I mean, it was on the regular news, on the Chicago news, but I don't hear it at all now.
0:46.4	So that left Reagan with a lot of questions.
0:49.8	Like, why don't they close beaches-free coli anymore?
0:52.7	Can that water really get dogs sick? But most important, just how safe are Chicago beaches for swimming these days?
1:00.0	On today's episode, we're revisiting the answers to Regan's questions about beach safety.
1:05.3	We first answered them in 2019.
1:08.1	Plus, we're tackling another beach safety question about why some
1:12.2	flotation devices are banned at Chicago beaches. That's all coming up.
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1:42.7	If every high fidelity member increase their monthly gift by just $3 or more, together we could fully replace the $3 million in federal funding that's
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	...

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