wightdogs.com ISLE of WIGHT DOGS and OWNERS

The Blue flag Award winning beach at Shanklin has become the first of the season to fail the water quality test due to pollution. (Good news for dogs as the people who award Blue Flags for the UK insist on dog bans, but the rest of the worlds Blue Flag beaches dont) So Fair Play To Shanklin

 The Environment agency tests the water at 20 weekly intervals throughout the season. They display the results on their website (although in our experience the result are not updated often, as of today 09 June the page for Shanklin is showing as the latest result the test from 17 May, as the page was last updated on the 20 May) The council also supply test results on their website (also out of date with the most recent result on 09 June being for the 01 June result) but the council give no details whatsoever as they only display results as smiley faces!

This does not display any urgency for publishing the results regardless of the great significance that water quality has, according to the information we are constantly having drummed into us. What relevance do these results have, to a person wanting to visit a beach and wishing to check on the water quality, if the results are nearly a month out of date?

The results table on the IW councils website shows Springvale and East Cowes as having "no results" at all this year. This struck us as very suspicious but as I am unable to email the council due to them "Blacklisting" me as a result I was unable to supply an answer to the people who consult this website, which is supplying a free service to the Island community and its visitors, funded entirely by me. I have now managed to establish through other sources that Springvale and East Cowes beaches are now in the category of  "Quality Coast Award  Non Bathing Beaches" consequently the water is no longer tested and the council are not supposed to promote them for swimming (Although Springvale is recommended for swimming on the IW councils website) Also there is no requirement for dogs to be banned, even though the council have just banned dogs entirely from Springvale beach.

It would appear that the council have not bothered to updated their website preferring to just display lines of "No Results" rather than remove irrelevant entries where the water is no longer tested from a table listing water testing results. Whether they actually intend to update the table on the website, and also the recommendations for visitors to swim on Non Bathing beaches, at any point before the end of the season we are unfortunately unable to ask them, once again due to me being "Blacklisted".

But the water test criteria appears to be very flexible, even for the so called "benchmark" Blue Flag award beaches.

As only 80% (16 out of the 20 taken in the season) of the samples have to pass the test for 500 or less total and faecal coliform per 100ml of water. Apart from one in five of the tests being allowed to Fail (contain more sewage than the pass results have) they can also pass regardless of if they have 1 per 100ml or 500 per 100ml which is five hundred times the amount.

The wighdogs website will continue to monitor the test test results throughout the season and we will update the Island Water Quality page with the patchy results as and when they become available.