Three Tendring beaches keep their Blue Flag status

12:40pm Wednesday 16th May 2012 in News By James Dwan

THREE beaches on Tendrings Sunshine Coast have retained their prestigious Blue Flags.

The awards, organised by Keep Britain Tidy, are made for offering visitors top-quality facilities, litter-free beaches and a safe environment.

Tendring Council said the accolades for Brightlingsea, Dovercourt and Clactons Martello Bay beaches offer a boost for the districts tourist trade before the summer season starts.

Tendrings beaches also held on to their six Quality Coast Awards for Martello Bay and West Beach, Clacton, Frinton Beach, Harwich Beach, Albion Beach, Walton, and the Naze, at Walton.

Stephen Mayzes, cabinet member for tourism, said: We already set very high standards for our holiday beaches, which are a vital part of the tourist offer in the district. We work hard to make sure our golden sands will attract people year after year and ensure they are also an important amenity where our residents can relax and improve their well-being. He added: While we know we have some of the best beaches and will strive to keep them that way it is great, and a real bonus to have this recognised by others .

Mr Mayzes said guidelines for water quality will be changing in 2015, which will make it more difficult for beaches to retain the honours.

He added: We are already holding talks with Anglian Water, who are responsible for water quality along the coastline, about this and what can be done in the future.

The Blue Flag scheme, launched by the Foundation for Environmental Education in 1987, recognises high standards in a number of criteria covering environmental education and information, water quality, environmental management, safety and services.

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Three Tendring beaches keep their Blue Flag status

Angela Burden, of Grange, with Alexander, 4 and Jamie, 8 months, at Henley Beach. Mrs Burden supports a proposal to ban smoking at the beach. Picture: Ian Roddie Source: AdelaideNow

WESTERN beaches could have “no smoking” sections under a proposal to be considered by Charles Sturt and Port-Enfield councils.

Charles Sturt Council will develop a policy on smoking, following concerns raised by some elected members about people lighting up in public outdoor areas, such as playgrounds and public open spaces, the Weekly Times Messenger reports.

Mayor Gary Johanson was also keen to apply for a ban on beaches in Port-Enfield, and said the council would consult the community before any changes were made.

The bans would be the first of their kind in SA, although there are already smoking restrictions in place at beaches in most Australian states.

>>For the full story, and to leave a comment, visit the Weekly Times Messenger website.

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Smoking ban plan for beaches

Mumbai, May 16:

Beaches seem to be the most favoured holiday destinations by travellers.

A survey conducted by online travel agency Expedia highlighted that 80 per cent of Indian travellers are already planning to go for a beach vacation in the next 12 months.

About 53 per cent Indians went to a domestic beach on their most recent trip while 47 per cent opted for an international beach, the survey said.

The survey reveals that as opposed to the general perception of high price sensitivity, the most important criteria for Indians to decide on a beach vacation is food and beverage reputation as well as the novelty of the destination, said Mr Manmeet Ahluwalia, Marketing Head, Expedia India.

This survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of Expedia.com among 8,599 adults across 21 countries, including India.

Indians place new experiences over relaxation, with over 60 per cent travelling for the experience of another culture alongside being on the beach.

Amongst different criteria for beach preference, 76 per cent of Indians prefer to go to a beach with tourist attractions near the beach or surrounding area, followed by water and sand quality, weather predictability and secluded beach environment.

When it comes to travelling, Indian women look for a secluded beach environment, the survey said.

Mumbai took the highest share of domestic vacations at 60 per cent while Delhi led the international destination vacation segment at 47 per cent.

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Beaches, the most favoured holiday destinations: Survey

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Beaches condo development approved

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Dozens of flyswatters wash up on Alaska beaches

An increasing number of England’s beaches have won Blue Flag awards this year, bringing the country into the top 10 worldwide.

For 2012, 79 English beaches have received the awards, nine more than in 2011. The area with the most Blue Flags this year is Thanet in Kent, with nine, followed by Torbay, in Devon, and Cornwall, both with five.

New awards for 2012 included Herne Bay in Kent, Seaton Carew Centre in Tyne and Wear, and Bridlington North and Bridlington South in East Yorkshire.

However, around 30 per cent of the beaches might not reach tougher water quality standards being introduced next year, according to Keep Britain Tidy.

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Beaches fly flag for England

Sandown beach scooped both a Blue Flag and Quality Coast Award.

BEACHES on the Isle of Wight have topped the table in the latest Blue Flag awards.

Three beaches have scooped both Blue Flag and Quality Coast Awards and 11 have been given Quality Coast Awards by Keep Britain Tidy, which runs the Blue Flag scheme.

The 14 awards put the Island at the top of the table in the South East for the second year in a row. Thanet was second with ten awards.

Shanklin, Sandown and Ventnor retained their Blue Flag and Quality Coast Awards, while Colwell, Cowes, East Cowes, Gurnard, Seagrove, Springvale, Totland and Yaverland once again earned Quality Coast Awards.

The awards are made for beaches that meet criteria on issues including water quality and litter levels.

In a statement, Cllr George Brown, Isle of Wight Council cabinet member for tourism said: “Once again we have had excellent news from the Keep Britain Tidy Campaign about our beaches.

“This retains our number one standing as the best tourism destination in the south east for quality beaches and shows the hard work to maintain our beaches over the last years has been worthwhile.

“This is very good news for the Island as we build up to the main tourism season.”

Earlier this month ten Isle of Wight beaches on the IW have received top accolades from The Marine Conservation Society (MCS).

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Blue Flag success for Island beaches

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Environment: More beaches gain Blue Flag awards

EIGHT beaches in the North East have been awarded Blue Flags for their water quality and top notch facilities.

The first class beaches are Seaton Carew, Hartlepool, Roker and Seaburn in Sunderland, Sandhaven at South Shields and in North Tyneside King Edwards Bay, Longsands South, Cullercoats and Whitley Bay.

The Blue Flag is the internationally recognised benchmark standard for beaches and is based on accessibility, cleanliness and lifeguard services, as well as water quality. The beaches have also been given Quality Coast Awards for beach management. England is now ranked in the worlds top 10 countries for having the most Blue Flag beaches out of 46 countries taking part in the Blue Flag scheme.

The awards follow top ratings earlier this month 29 beaches in the North East which were recommended in the Marine Conservation Societys Good Beach Guide.

Phil Barton, chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy which is responsible for the Blue Flag scheme in England and the Quality Coast Awards said: We urge more holidaymakers to take advantage of the North Easts award-winning seaside resorts this summer.

Its great to see that beaches along our coastline have achieved high standards of excellence for visitors. With eight beaches in the region receiving both Blue Flags and Quality Coast Awards, what better way to holiday in the North East than to visit one of these local award-winning beaches?

John Kelly, portfolio holder for safer city and culture on Sunderland City Council said: It is always great news for everyone in the city and all our many visitors that Blue Flags continue to fly proudly over both Roker and Seaburn beaches this summer. These flags also recognise the hard work of council staff in maintaining the seafront and beaches for residents and visitors.

Cullercoats Bay in North Tyneside qualified for a Blue Flag after narrowly missing the water quality standard last year. The council responded by capping an old culvert, which was considered to be the source of the potential contamination.

North Tyneside Mayor Linda Arkley said: This is fantastic news. Tourism is worth over 240m to the local economy and we know that our coastline is the main reason people come here.

Thats why were so delighted to have a full complement of beach awards.

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Eight North East beaches awarded Blue Flags

EIGHT beaches in the North East have been awarded Blue Flags for their water quality and top notch facilities.

The first class beaches are Seaton Carew, Hartlepool, Roker and Seaburn in Sunderland, Sandhaven at South Shields and in North Tyneside King Edwards Bay, Longsands South, Cullercoats and Whitley Bay.

The Blue Flag is the internationally recognised benchmark standard for beaches and is based on accessibility, cleanliness and lifeguard services, as well as water quality. The beaches have also been given Quality Coast Awards for beach management. England is now ranked in the worlds top 10 countries for having the most Blue Flag beaches out of 46 countries taking part in the Blue Flag scheme.

The awards follow top ratings earlier this month 29 beaches in the North East which were recommended in the Marine Conservation Societys Good Beach Guide.

Phil Barton, chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy which is responsible for the Blue Flag scheme in England and the Quality Coast Awards said: We urge more holidaymakers to take advantage of the North Easts award-winning seaside resorts this summer.

Its great to see that beaches along our coastline have achieved high standards of excellence for visitors. With eight beaches in the region receiving both Blue Flags and Quality Coast Awards, what better way to holiday in the North East than to visit one of these local award-winning beaches?

John Kelly, portfolio holder for safer city and culture on Sunderland City Council said: It is always great news for everyone in the city and all our many visitors that Blue Flags continue to fly proudly over both Roker and Seaburn beaches this summer. These flags also recognise the hard work of council staff in maintaining the seafront and beaches for residents and visitors.

Cullercoats Bay in North Tyneside qualified for a Blue Flag after narrowly missing the water quality standard last year. The council responded by capping an old culvert, which was considered to be the source of the potential contamination.

North Tyneside Mayor Linda Arkley said: This is fantastic news. Tourism is worth over 240m to the local economy and we know that our coastline is the main reason people come here.

Thats why were so delighted to have a full complement of beach awards.

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Flying a flag for beaches

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More English beaches gaining Blue Flag awards

15 May 2012 Last updated at 07:31 ET

Four of Devon’s best-known beaches have lost their prestigious Blue Flag awards from Keep Britain Tidy.

Croyde, Woolacombe and Preston Sands failed to meet the necessary standards. Bigbury-on-Sea did not apply for the flags, which are awarded annually.

Sandy Bay was awarded a flag, however, bringing Devon’s total to 12 – five of which were awarded in Torbay. Westward Ho! received its ninth Blue Flag.

A total of 79 beaches received Blue Flags in England – nine more than 2011.

Forty-one countries take part in the Blue Flag programme, which is managed internationally by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) and in England by Keep Britain Tidy.

A Blue Flag application costs 792 and awards are based on a number of criteria, including water quality, environmental management, beach services and safety.

Keep Britain Tidy spokeswoman Helen Bingham said water quality was the reason Croyde, Woolacombe and Preston Sands lost their flags.

More stringent water quality standards will be introduced next year under the new EU Bathing Water Directive, which organisers have said could result in 30% of English beaches losing their flags.

From 2013, Blue Flag beaches will also have to provide warnings to beach users when nearby combined sewer overflows discharge, if that discharge could temporarily affect the bathing water quality.

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Four beaches lose Blue Flag title

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Hawaii’s Beaches Are in Retreat, and Way of Life May Follow

It will cost $20 this season to park at Cahoon Hollow and White Crest beaches, the selectmen agreed Tuesday, after hearing Suzanne Grout Thomas, beach administrator, explain that the rates at these two beaches have not changed in 19 years.

In 1993 the board of selectmen raised the fee from $10 to $15 a day. The parking fees at the other beaches already have been raised. Nauset and Barnstable for two years have charged $20 per weekend without any griping.

The proposed fee increase would help her staff, she said, because we wont have to have $500 in fives every weekend to make change.

The town took in $153,825 in revenue between the two beaches from 10,255 vehicle passes. If they have the same number of vehicles this year, it will mean $51,275 in anticipated new revenue, she said. Since the town needs revenue, she recommended the increase, and the board readily agreed.

The board took no action on beach fire regulations Tuesday, agreeing to wait until it gets a report back from Thomas and the ad-hoc committee created to come up with new rules and regulations for beach fires.

That means beach fires will be allowed, as they traditionally have been on four ocean beaches, with four permits issued daily for each beach.

I recommend we leave things as they are for the summer, Thomas said.

The committee came up with 20 recommendations, only one of which Thomas said she did not agree with. That was a regulation that those receiving a fire permit be given flags and a bucket when they pick up their permit.

I dont have funding for that, Thomas said. I cant imagine how many buckets and flags will walk out of here as souvenirs. Im not sure that part will not work.

But most of the committee recommendations could be put in place, she said, and she will report back to them, as the summer progresses, on the beach fire situation. One of the committee recommendations was that 10 fire permits be issued, but she was not sure if that meant 10 permits for each of the four beaches, or 10 permits to be divided between the four beaches.

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Fees raised at two Wellfleet beaches

JEFFERSON CITY Several Missouri State Park beaches, including two in St. Francois County, opened Friday for the 2012 recreational season.

Monsanto and Pim beaches at St. Joe Park opened along with Cuivre River State Park in Lincoln County, Lake Wappapello State Park in Wayne County, Long Branch State Park in Macon County, Pomme de Terre State Parks Hermitage and Pittsburg beaches in Hickory County and Stockton State Park in Dade County.

Additional state park designated swimming beaches are scheduled to open for the recreational season later this month.

Visitors to Missouri State Parks are able to sign up to receive electronic notices about the status of state park beaches. For the past two years, visitors have been able to check the status of beaches at a glance on the Missouri Department of Natural Resources website at http://bit.ly/MoStateParksBeachStatus as well as http://mostateparks.com.

In addition to checking the website, visitors can sign up to receive free alerts and advisories through e-mail or text messages at http://bit.ly/HlSnaG. The department will notify subscribers when the beach status website is updated with the latest postings and will provide a link to view an interactive map of all state park beaches.

The departments map will display flags at each beachs location, with a green flag denoting an open beach and a red flag denoting a beach that has been closed. If a beach is closed, the flags will denote the reason, which could include high bacteria, flooding or high water levels, or storm debris.

When a beach is closed, signs will be posted at the beach and on bulletin boards at the park office to notify the public. Beaches will be closed for high bacteria when a single E. coli sample exceeds 235 cfu/100ml or when the geometric mean a 30-day rolling average exceeds 126 cfu/100 ml.

The department samples the water at all designated beaches in the state park system weekly during the recreational season to determine suitability for swimming. The department will post the information about the beach status on the website at http://bit.ly/MoStateParksBeachStatus as well as http://mostateparks.com. The sample test results indicate a snap shot of the water quality taken at the beaches at a specific time; however, a single sample does not provide an overall sense of the water quality in the lake where the beach is located.

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Beaches open for summer season

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Thousands of birds found dead on Chile beaches

BEACH LEVEL RISE: A recent powerful earthquake reversed years worth of coastal erosion at beaches in Chile. Image: Wikimedia Commons/Maximiliano Reichenbauer

In 2010, a massive, magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck the south central coast of Chile, rupturing beaches and launching a tsunami that rode inland with devastating effect. In an instant, whole sections of the coastline were transformed, with large swaths of sand and rock lifted from beneath the waves.

For Chile, it was a disaster of sobering proportions. But for Eduardo Jaramillo and Jenifer Dugan — researchers who have spent years studying the effects of coastal erosion on beach ecology — it was also a rare opportunity to see one of climate change’s more immediate effects put in reverse.

“It was like setting the clock backward,” said Dugan, a researcher at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “The whole coast went up in places. Beaches that had been much lower elevation relative to sea level came up a couple of meters. They regained a lot of lost ground.”

Before the quake, that “lost ground” had been steadily eaten away by a combination of natural and human influences.

As thermal expansion and glacial melt — both products of global climate change — push sea levels steadily higher, coastlines are shifting inland. Yet in many places, that shift has been arrested by man-made sea walls, vast projects meant to protect the trillions of dollars of infrastructure that perch on the edge of the world’s oceans.

Sea walls are often constructed at high-tide lines, and although they may protect the infrastructure behind them, they actually exacerbate the erosion of the beach in front of them, said Jaramillo, of Universidad Austral de Chile.

How sea walls accelerate erosion “When you build a sea wall close to high tide, the water actually hits it and bounces off with more force” than if the tide had been allowed to go out naturally, he said. Beaches lose more sand to erosion when they have sea walls than when they’re allowed to move naturally, he added.

For the plants and animals that inhabit beaches, that means a precipitous loss of habitat. Along much of the Chilean coast, species have abandoned beaches hemmed in by closing walls of water and concrete. But in those places where the quake lifted new ground, life quickly returned.

“Dune plants are coming back in places there haven’t been plants, as far as we know, for a very long time,” Dugan said. “The earthquake created sandy beach habitat where it had been lost.” Invertebrate and avian life were coming back quickly, as well, she said.

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Chilean Earthquake Restores Beaches

PROVIDENCE, R.I.Rhode Island is opening three popular state beaches for weekend use.

The state’s Department of Environmental Management announced Wednesday that Scarborough North, Roger Wheeler and Misquamicut state beaches will open Saturday.

The beaches will be open on Saturdays and Sundays only until Memorial Day, when all state beaches will open for daily use.

Beaches at Lincoln Woods State Park and Goddard Memorial State Park will also open Saturday for daily use.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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RI to open 3 state beaches for the summer

PROVIDENCE, R.I (WPRI) – The Department of Environmental Management announced that three state beaches in South County will be open weekends from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Scarborough North, Roger Wheeler, and Misquamicut state beaches will open Saturday.

The beaches will stay open on weekends until Memorial Day for early beach-goers, with aims to advance season pass sales.

Lincoln Woods State Park and Goddard Memorial State Park beach will open daily and on weekends, respectively, also beginning Saturday, May 12.

All other Rhode Island state beaches will open Memorial Day for daily service through Labor Day.

The daily beach parking fees are:

RI residents:

Non-residents:

Season pass prices are $60 for residents, and $120 for non-residents (senior citizen pricing is $30 and $60, respectively).

Season passes will be sold weekends only beginning Saturday, May 12 at Scarborough North, Roger Wheeler, and Misquamicut state beaches.

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Select state beaches opening Saturday

By: Wire Report | The Associated Press Published: May 10, 2012 Updated: May 10, 2012 – 5:54 AM

Rhode Island is opening three popular state beaches for weekend use.

The state’s Department of Environmental Management announced Wednesday that Scarborough North, Roger Wheeler and Misquamicut state beaches will open Saturday.

The beaches will be open on Saturdays and Sundays only until Memorial Day, when all state beaches will open for daily use.

Beaches at Lincoln Woods State Park and Goddard Memorial State Park will also open Saturday for daily use.

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RI opens 3 state beaches early