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King’s Beach in Lynn has the worst water quality rating of any beach in the state. Here’s why.

By Helena Getahun-Hawkins Globe Correspondent,Updated July 11, 2024, 12:49 p.m.

LYNN — For Susan MacDonald, King’s Beach seemed like the perfect place to bask in Monday afternoon’s sunshine. Save for a strip of mud-colored waves crashing against the shore, the beach’s glistening blue waters extended toward the horizon. Kids joyously splashed about, their grandfather capturing the moment on his phone.

Although MacDonald had seen the various signs urging people to forgo swimming due to high bacteria levels, she figured that simply sticking her feet in the water would not pose much of a risk.

“What’s with the bacteria? It’s always been here,” said MacDonald, who has lived in Lynn for 30 years.

For as long as most Lynn residents can remember, King’s Beach has been sullied with excessive levels of bacteria, causing its frequent shutdowns. On Wednesday, it was one of 32 beaches in Massachusetts that were closed for reasons including high bacteria levels.

But King’s Beach stands out. According to an annual report card tracking water safety at metropolitan beaches, it had by far the worst water quality last year of any beach in the Boston area. While community activists have been advocating for the beach’s cleanup for decades, the issue has gained more traction as local organizations and government officials partner to create sustainable solutions.

RELATED: Beach closing tracker: See where beaches are closed in Mass.

Chris Mancini, executive director of Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, which issued the beach report card, likes to describe King’s Beach’s struggle with pollution as a “death by 1,000 paper cuts.”

Almost 100 years ago, Stacey’s Brook, a brook with its mouth on King’s Beach, was converted into a sewer and stormwater system for part of Lynn and Swampscott, emptying its contents onto the beach, explained Mancini, whose organization has advocated for the cleanup of Boston Harbor since the ‘80s. Around 25 years ago, the Lynn Water and Sewer Commission separated the two systems, significantly reducing the overall contamination, especially during storms when overwhelmed sewerage systems release excess flows into the ocean, Mancini said.

Despite this major improvement, contamination did not disappear. Enter the death by 1,000 paper cuts. With old clay sewage pipes prone to cracking and occasional user errors, including residents plugging their toilets into stormwater pipes instead of sewage pipes, little bits of sewage flow into the watershed, Mancini said. The bacteria then multiply, leading to a daily influx of contaminants, he said. While the sewage is not visible, its presence can aggravate growth of brown-colored algae, which emits a strong sulfur smell as it decomposes.

Unlike East Boston, which lacks a natural waterway but still has a stormwater system that empties onto the beach, it is not possible to simply remove Stacey’s Brook and divert stormwater to another area.

The contamination is a glaring public health issue. Ingesting human and animal feces can cause a host of gastrointestinal symptoms, from nausea to vomiting to diarrhea, said Dr. Simone Wildes, an infectious disease physician at South Shore Health. Even if a swimmer does not directly ingest the water, they might get sick from touching the water and putting their hands in their mouth. The water can also infect open wounds, which is especially dangerous for immunocompromised people, who might not have the capacity to effectively fight off infections.

“When they say beaches need to be closed, there’s a reason,” said Wildes.

Robert Tucker has continued to advocate for improvements in water quality as president of the Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beach, a volunteer organization dedicated to bettering their community beaches.

“If this was any other community, why would this be allowed to exist?” said Tucker.

While neighboring Nahant and Swampscott have multiple cleaner beaches, apart from Lynn Beach, a small cove that disappears at high tide, Lynn only has King’s.

Tucker said many residents here may not be able to travel to the Cape, Maine, or New Hampshire for a summer getaway. Instead, Lynn’s working-class community depends on King’s Beach, he said.

“This is a fundamental environmental justice issue,” said Mayor Jared Nicholson, noting that the majority of Lynn residents are people of color. According to 2020 Census data, around 44 percent of residents are Hispanic and around 12 percent are Black, with more than 50 percent of residents speaking a language other than English at home.

Andrea Amour is similarly frustrated.

“It’s atypical to, in Massachusetts, have a beach that is riddled with human sewage,” said Amour, cofounder of Save King’s Beach, a grass-roots community project that seeks to increase transparency and educate the community about the pollution problems at King’s Beach.

Particularly on hot summer days, Amour said, she has witnessed entire families get into the water, unaware of its contamination. Amour worries that the warning signs are not reaching all residents, particularly the 16 percent of adults who speak limited English.

Amour said she requested, in November, that the Department of Conservation and Recreation place a staff member, ideally multilingual, on the beach to inform residents of the pollution. She said the department has not put this measure in place, which frustrates her, given the many staffers she said are available at Nahant Beach.

“To be told that we can’t get one single person to educate the public about the sewage on a beach just seems like an abdication of responsibility,” Amour said.

State Senator Brendan Crighton, who represents Lynn, said the public notification system should be improved.

“We need to make it as clear as possible that it’s unsafe,” he said.

A DCR spokesperson said that the department, in partnership with Save King’s Beach and local officials, is developing multilingual signage, which will include a QR code that links to translations in 10 languages. She said the department expects to post them this summer.

The best solution, Mancini said, would be to fix the pipes that lead to contamination. Under consent decrees from the Environmental Protection Agency, Lynn and Swampscott are required to remedy their contamination issues, which includes repairing their pipes — an ongoing process, as they require consistent upkeep.

“If we just focus on fixing the pipes, it’s unclear how quickly that will get the numbers down,” Mancini said.

In the meantime, Mancini’s organization, engineers, government officials from Lynn and Swampscott, state agencies, and the EPA are working to come up with parallel solutions to expedite the process of cleaning up the beach. Among the solutions they are considering is extending Stacey’s Brook’s pipe farther into the water to eliminate immediate contamination of swimming waters, ultraviolet disinfection, and oxidation technologies — a solution that the state is vetting to ensure living creatures in the water will not be harmed, said Mancini.

Mancini hopes the committee will, over the next few months, pursue funding to put a solution in place.

Until then, Lynn residents continue to go to King’s Beach, intent on enjoying the atmosphere, while still avoiding the water. On Monday afternoon, the beach welcomed around five visitors, most of them hanging out on the shore.

Robyn Cerrone spent her day off paging through a magazine on a lounge chair.

“I was sitting here earlier looking at the water — it looks so beautiful — thinking to myself how sad it is that man is polluting the entire world, including this beautiful ocean that’s been near my house forever,” Cerrone said.

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Helena Getahun-Hawkins can be reached at [email protected].