NEWPORT - The sun, a pale ghost of itself, struggles to climb above the horizon. The temperature hovers slightly above zero, and the wind whips mercilessly out of the northwest. Sea smoke, which materializes only on the coldest days of the year, blows across the water in wind-driven wisps.
Easton's Beach is virtually deserted this morning, except for one corner of the nearly empty parking lot, where a small group of surfers gathers.
Marty Casey, with his long, slightly graying hair tucked under an ear band, ventures out toward the water, stepping on ice-encrusted seaweed left by the high tide. But he carries no surfboard, nor are there waves to ride. And instead of a wetsuit, he's wearing hip waders and layers of clothing beneath a hooded sweatshirt.
Casey slowly wades into the water with a towel wrapped around his neck and empty bottles and a thermometer in his bare hands. He stops when the water is up to his thighs. He checks the water temperature, collects samples in the bottles and then returns to the beach.
"It's 36 degrees," he says, trying to wrap his hands in the towel. "It stings. It absolutely stings."
The water samples that Casey and his fellow surfers collect this morning are placed in a cooler back in the parking lot. They will be brought to a laboratory at the state Department of Health and tested for fecal coli form and enterococci, indicators of human and animal waste. The results, they hope, will help everyone better understand the pollution problems that have increasingly plagued one of the state's best known beaches.
Several months into the volunteer project, the group is shredding the stereotype of surfers as carefree thrill-seekers devoted only to the next storm surge. Instead, they are earning a reputation as dedicated environmentalists, willing to sacrifice their time and their comfort for a cause dear to the Ocean State - clean beaches.
ONE DAY LATE last summer, David McLaughlin got a call from a friend who had just been to Easton's Beach. The tide was going out, and as it did, it revealed something rather unpleasant and alarming.
"I've never seen this many dead clams," said the friend, who used to be a lifeguard at the beach for about 10 years.
A lot of rain had just fallen, which typically flushes pollution into pipes and streams that empty at the beach and force the beach to close. It was Aug. 29. The next day, the state's water-quality testing program would close down for the summer. And no one would know for sure when the water would be deemed safe again for swimming.
It got McLaughlin and several of his Aquidneck Island surfer friends thinking. About 20 or 30 of them had recently formed a group, Clean Ocean Access, to address water-quality and public- access issues. They were upset about blocked access to a favorite surfer spot during the restoration of the Cliff Walk and disturbed by beach closures. In 2004, the Department of Health closed Easton's for seven days. The number fell to two days in 2005. Last year, the number ballooned to 12 days.
McLaughlin, acting as the group's spokesman, went before the City Council to air the group's concerns publicly. Now the clam kill, coinciding with the end of the state testing program, got the group thinking. Surfers and polar bear swimmers go in the water year- round, and no one checks the water for them after summer's last hurrah.
After learning that a state-run, year-round testing program would be cost prohibitive, the surfers decided to take matters into their own hands. They offered to do all of the work for free if someone would pay for the laboratory tests, which cost $25 per sample.
"If you asked the state to do the program, they would have charged $78,000. A lot of the costs are labor costs," McLaughlin says. "We just want to monitor it and potentially correlate it to atmospheric, oceanographic and human events."
It was an offer officials couldn't refuse. A first round of testing began in the fall, with the Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Environmental Management picking up the $9,000 laboratory tab.
In just a matter of months, Clean Ocean Access proved to officials from Newport to Providence that it was serious about science. To continue the program through the winter, Clean Ocean Access urged the Newport City Council to pay for the volunteer effort. The council agreed to join with Middletown in sharing the $11,500 cost.
"They're so dedicated. Their efforts in trying to get off-season data is great," said Amy Mocarsky, program assistant for the Department of Health's beach-monitoring office. "We wish we could do everything, but we can't."
Gerald Kempen, Middletown's town administrator, called the arrangement with Clean Ocean Access "fantastic."
"One of the biggest issues around the country is the whole issue of citizen involvement," he said. "The problem is not that people are involved. It's that they are not involved."
THE BLOND-HAIRED McLaughlin first took to the surf in Hawaii when he was 13, and continued to enjoy the sport after moving to Newport when he was in high school.
"I've been riding waves for over 22 years," he says.
Now, at 35, he works in information technology for Hasbro Inc. The others in the group are also well past 30, but are still as passionate about the ocean as they were in their youth.
"We were kids at one time and now we are adults," he says. "You get older in life and you realize you need to give back. You want to make sure it exists for everyone else."
McLaughlin was joined by Casey, a home inspector, and Drew Carey, who helped design the testing program.
"I'm a marine scientist and a surfer," Carey says.
Carey, 51, grew up in California, a surfing mecca, but didn't take up the sport until 5 years ago, 10 years after he moved to Newport. He lives on Eustis Avenue, near the beach and a moat that is suspected of carrying contaminants to a stream that empties onto the beach.
"The beach closures and the condition of the beach is something I've been concerned about for quite a while," he says. "The heart of the question is, 'What is the source of the frequent contamination that is clearly driven by rain events?' "
Surfers have a heightened interest in water quality, he says, because the best waves are generated by storms, which also tend to send pollution levels soaring. In addition to that, surfers tend to stay in the water longer than the average bather. Not only are surfers more at risk, says Carey, but they're also more suited to taking on such an environmental cause.
For surfers, he says, "there's a pleasure of being out in the natural world when other people wouldn't drag themselves out of bed. It forces you to pay close attention to the conditions of the water, which way the wind is blowing. Most surfers are very attuned to changes. They have a lot of anecdotal knowledge. They're very sensitive to what's going on."
And just because others stop going to the beach after Labor Day, he says, that shouldn't be a reason for the state to test water quality only in the summer.
"Whether it's 10 people or 10,000, it's still a public health risk," he says.
THEY GATHER in the beach parking lot at 8 a.m. every Tuesday and Friday. It's rain or shine, or in this day's case, cold- bitter cold.
Casey pulls up in a truck with a sign that reads, "Clean Ocean Access Water Testing." He's eager to develop name recognition for the group to help its grass-roots campaign. About five regulars show up, as well as two women who want to begin volunteering. Despite the weather, they've arrived for something of an orientation.
"I love the water," says Liz Andrews, explaining why she wants to get involved. She adds, "My kids surf."
With the wind careening across the parking lot, making it feel well below zero, the group quickly breaks up. Each person is assigned to take water samples at different locations, 11 in all. They either walk across the sand to the surf or drive off to disparate spots around the nearly mile-long expanse of beach.
McLaughlin gets in his car and drives into Middletown. His first stop is a 36-inch drain pipe off Esplanade Road, in Middletown. He brings a notepad to record observations, such as the water temperature, the amount of seaweed in the area, anything that might prove later to correlate with pollution levels. He climbs partway down a seaside embankment to the pipe, which drains onto the beach. Water trickles out of it. He sticks his hand through a grate and measures the temperature with a thermometer.
"Forty-two degrees," he says.
While taking a water sample, he notices a frozen furry mass, possibly an animal carcass, just beyond the grate.
"I'm going to go get my camera," he says and returns for a snapshot. "Not that I'm a believer in the theory, but some people say that the cause of this pollution could be from a family of raccoons."
In fact, a consultant for Middletown conducted DNA testing on some water samples from drain pipes and determined that the waste in them was animal, not human, Kempen said.
McLaughlin drives across Memorial Boulevard to check on Ben Swanson at the southern edge of Easton Pond. It's a key spot in examining the source of pollution at the beach. Here a stream flows under the boulevard, across the beach and into the surf. It's fed by what locals call the "moat," a channel of water along the edge of the pond that carries runoff from Newport's eastern neighborhoods. A spillway from the freshwater pond also feeds into the stream. Finally, two other pipes empty into the stream, one owned by the state Department of Transportation and another from the adjacent Wave Avenue pumping station.
When rain flows into stormwater pipes through cracks and illegal connections, the station is overwhelmed and dumps partially treated sewage into the stream. Improvements have reduced these occurrences to a few times a year, says Kempen, and they could be eliminated soon with a slated $2.51-million upgrade.
"We take a sample here which is representative of what is coming this way," says McLaughlin, "but it doesn't tell you where it's coming from."
Swanson wades into the stream to get his sample.
"This is the first time I've had to break the ice," he says.
THE MANY MONTHS of work have already yielded results.
One thing that seems apparent, says Carey, is that a rainfall of as little as 2/10 of an inch seems to trigger contaminated runoff, which then lingers in the water off the beach for one to two days.
"Had the beaches been [officially] open in the fall," Carey says, "the majority of the time they would have been closed [for contamination]. We had a pretty rainy fall. To me that says we have a persistent problem. It's not being flushed out. We either have to treat it in the pipes or do something to prevent it from coming out or redirect it where it is coming out."
The problem, says Carey, is that there are many possible culprits in the area because of the various stormwater systems. Water flows off streets, parking lots and yards and into storm drains that discharge into the moat. Failed septic systems can also contribute to the problem
Studies in both Middletown and Newport, he says, failed to identify a significant source of human sewage contributing to the pollution at Easton's Beach.
"So it's still a bit of a mystery," he says.
THE VOLUNTEERS gather back at the parking lot. Today, it's all work, no play for these surfers.
"If we wear a wetsuit, we'll go surfing after the sampling," says McLaughlin. But he adds, "There's no waves today."
What's building, instead of the waves, is interest in the grass- roots group. Clean Ocean Access has expanded its list of supporters to 150 and has held several beach cleanups and fundraisers. To draw people to the events, the group videotaped local surfers riding waves and invited them to a "video premiere."
"We want to attract mom and dad to bring their kids," McLaughlin says. "People find an interest in getting involved with our group because they see in such a short time we are doing things. A woman in her 60s comes out to help with testing because she wants clean water for her grandchildren."
McLaughlin places a blue cooler on the pavement. Coded bottles are placed in it.
"You got the samples? You got the stuff?" he asks those who have not yet provided him their bottles.
The samples and required paperwork must be brought within six hours to a state lab in Providence. Another volunteer will deliver them on the way to work. Some day, he hopes to persuade the federal government to conduct water testing year-round. But first, it's time to get somewhere warm.
