Significa
- By Wilson P. Dizard III
- Jun 23, 2004
You might think that going to the beach wouldn't require a multimillion-dollar federal grant program and the use of sophisticated systems. You'd be wrong. The Environmental Protection Agency's Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health program, at
www.epa.gov/waterscience/beaches, plans to distribute $10 million this year to the 35 states with beaches.
Since Congress passed the Beach Act in 2000, EPA has issued about $32 million for the project, which forms part of the Clean Beach Program. States have used the grant funds to create Web sites such as mainehealthybeaches.org and
www.health.ri.gov/environment/beaches. Wisconsin officials used the funds to identify the state's 173 public beaches and collect data about them using geographic information systems.