PORTLAND (AP) – An environmental group on Thursday lauded one city for good water quality monitoring at its beaches, while chiding two other communities for failing to notify sunbathers if bacteria levels exceed health standards.

South Portland’s Willard Beach was one of four the group singled out for praise because of the city’s water quality monitoring, its policy of closing the beach when bacteria levels are unsafe, and overall efforts to reduce pollution.

Although the number of beach closures and advisories nationwide rose by 51 percent from a year earlier, Maine had no closings or health warnings due to pollution, the National Resources Defense Council said in its 14th annual assessment of beach water quality.

Frequent water quality testing is important to Maine’s coastal communities, said Joan Saxe of the Maine chapter of the Sierra Club.

“For health reasons, they should know what’s going on at their beaches so that families can feel comfortable about going there, that they won’t get sick from potential bacteria,” she said. “It also is an indication of upstream problems. If there is bacteria, then they need to go and find out why.”

“Willard Beach is exemplary,” she said. “It would be nice if there were more beaches being monitored and more beaches doing what South Portland is doing.”

Unlike New Hampshire, where the Department of Environmental Services monitors water quality along the state’s 18 miles of open ocean coastline, Maine towns and state parks test their own beaches.

Three years ago, Portland and South Portland were the only cities doing so. Today, 17 municipalities monitor water quality at 37 beaches, said Esperanza Stancioff, coordinator of the Maine Healthy Beaches program.

She sees advantages to keeping the testing local.

“Maine is different because we have such a long coastline and we’re so spread out – it would be very difficult for the department to take that on,” she said.

The Maine State Planning Office and Maine Coastal Program paid for the additional monitoring with a federal grant, she said.

Thursday’s report included Bar Harbor and Kennebunkport on its list of four “beach bums” because the towns do not regularly monitor beach water for swimmer safety or notify bathers of unhealthy bacteria levels.

“It’s such a new program that I wouldn’t call anyone in Maine a bum.’ I wouldn’t even say anything negative about them,” Stancioff said. “We’ve been working very closely with the towns and state parks and I would say, in almost all cases, they definitely want to do the right thing.”

Although Maine made it through 2003 without a beach closing or water quality advisories, warnings have been issued this summer at Willard Beach and at beaches in Mount Desert, Camden and Lincolnville.

A dry summer may have contributed to the lack of advisories last year, Stancioff said, while additional rainfall pushing pollution into the ocean may be one of the factors behind this year’s water quality warnings.

AP-ES-08-05-04 1555EDT