Fish Houses Confirmed as Contributor to Big Beach Bacteria Issues

There was a distinct odor around North Hampton State Beach on Wednesday, and depending on the perspective the smell was either the stuff of success or growing concern.

A specially-trained dog sniffed out at least four distinct areas with fecal bacteria concentrations around the fish houses on the north end of the beach, in addition to confirming the presence of fecal bacteria in the water flowing out of the outlet where Little River connects with the Atlantic Ocean on the north end of the beach.

The findings were exactly what North Hampton Conservation Commission Chairman Chris Ganotis said he was looking for, as officials have long suspected some of the ongoing contamination problems at the beach — problems that have been worse this summer due to high rainfall — could be due to outdated or compromised systems around the fish houses.

"The big problems that we're finding are around the foundations [of the structures and not areas along the nearby sewer line]," said Emily DiFranco, a project manager and water quality specialist for FB Environmental Associates, the Portsmouth firm overseeing the work for North Hampton. "People either don't know that their systems are failing, or the issue is due to improper maintenance."

DiFranco, Ganotis and North Hampton Building Inspector Kevin Kelley accompanied Environmental Canine Services' Karen Reynolds and her feces-sniffing dog, Logan, Wednesday afternoon as Logan was used to detect the presence of bacteria in various portions of North Hampton State Beach, Bass Beach, and multiple Rye beaches.

Logan, a 5-year-old collie mix, searched around and along the sides of each fish house, sitting numerous times to signal to Reynolds, whose company is based out of Michigan, that there was some level of bacteria in the area. 

Logan sat near a granite post on the Ocean Boulevard side of the fish house closest the north end of North Hampton State Beach, in an area between the that structure and the second-closest fish house, on both the beach side and Ocean Boulevard side of the seventh-closest fish house, and near a septic tank on the Ocean Boulevard side of the ninth-closest fish house.

Ganotis said the majority of the fish houses don't have septic systems and instead use dry wells or common holding tanks for waste that he said are as "historic" as the longstanding cottages themselves. The age of these systems could play a large portion into the issues detected Wednesday, issues that will be further investigated by Fire Chief and Public Health Officer Dennis Cote and town staff.

"The dog did a lot of sitting," said Ganotis. "It's amazing. Think about all the manpower it would've taken to find these things that the dogs can find in a couple of hours."

The use of Logan and fellow Environmental Canine Services dog Sable, a 7-year-old German shepherd mix, in North Hampton cost the town a "couple thousand dollars" of previously-approved town meeting funds, according to Ganotis.

The dogs are being used this week in a variety of New Hampshire and Maine communities, including Rye, Durham and Portsmouth, all of which have had problems similar to those in North Hampton. Separate water samples were also collected Wednesday in a variety of locations around Little River, and DiFranco said results from these samples' testing will be available within about two weeks so officials can implement a plan to address the contamination.

Logan and Sable — who has a less-sensitive nose and barks upon finding bacteria — were also used to detect whether bacteria was present in the samples collected up and downstream along the watershed. Logan indicated all six North Hampton samples had bacteria, while Sable only indicated bacteria was present at the Appledore Avenue sampling site.

[Editor's note: A brief video of Sable inspecting samples is attached to this story under the photo above.]

The Appledore Avenue culvert is a previously-identified problem area. Reynolds said it's common to have mixed results from the dogs, most often due to the fact that the dogs are sensitive and insensitive to different types of bacteria, and therefore don't always both signal the presence of bacteria in a given area.

Studies by the University of Santa Barbara have shown there are "almost no false positives and very few false negatives" while using Logan and Sable, according to DiFranco. DiFranco said testing the samples will confirm what kinds of bacteria are actually present at any and all of the testing sites, as well as indicate whether the bacteria was due to human or animal causes.

Due to time restrictions, the dogs didn't search a culvert and marsh near Bass Beach that Ganotis believes is leading to bacteria advisories in that area. DiFranco said they'll return Thursday with one of the dogs to inspect that area, located off of the north end of the beach, and collect water samples.

More information about the dogs can be found on Environmental Canine Services' website, while more information about FB Environmental can be found here.