Braymere Lake's Swim Beach: Close It After Every Storm?

Resolution: "Ashfold should close the Braymere Lake swim beach for 24 hours after any rain of one inch or more, without waiting for a test result."

Braymere Lake sits in the fictional town of Ashfold. Every record and number in this kit was written for the debate and is fictional. The town beach is open from June through August. A lifeguard collects one water sample each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. The sample goes to a county lab, where it sits in a warm cabinet overnight. Results come back about 24 hours later.

The lab counts a group of bacteria that lives in the guts of people and animals. Those bacteria do not usually cause the illness themselves. They show that waste has reached the water, and other germs may have come with it. Ashfold uses a swim limit written for this scenario: 200 colonies in every 100 milliliters of water.

Rain matters because runoff carries waste into the lake. Storm drains along Shore Road empty into the swim cove. A pasture with 40 cows drains toward the same cove. Geese use the lawn beside the beach all summer.

Roles. Four students argue for the rain rule. Four argue against it. One student moderates and keeps time. The rest of the class serves as the parks board, writes questions, and votes.

Format. Three-minute openings, five minutes of preparation, three-minute rebuttals, then two-minute closings. Each team writes out its opening statement and its rebuttal notes and turns them in at the end of the hearing. Each closing must end with one sentence naming how the team would monitor the beach and one sentence naming how it would cut the bacteria reaching the water.

Last summer's fictional record. The beach saw 12 storms of one inch or more.

Everything below comes from the fictional Ashfold records written for this debate.

Case for closing after every storm of one inch or more

1. The lab result always arrives late. A Monday sample is read on Tuesday. Swimmers spend Monday in water whose test result is not back yet.
2. In 8 of the 12 storms in the table, the next morning's count sat above the town limit of 200. The pattern is strong enough to act on before the result comes back.
3. After rains under one inch, only 1 of 9 samples went above the limit. The rule targets the storms that actually matter and leaves small rains alone.
4. Bacteria are patchy. One sample from one spot can miss a plume coming out of a storm drain twenty feet away, so a single clean result is weak proof of a clean cove.
5. A rain rule costs nothing to run. Anyone can read a rain gauge, and the sign goes up the same morning.

Case against the rain rule

1. The rule closes clean days. In 4 of the 12 storms the count stayed below the limit, so those closings kept people out of water that met the standard.
2. Closings have a price. The town canceled 6 swim lessons last summer and the beach snack stand reported $1,850 in lost sales on closed days.
3. Sunlight breaks bacteria down quickly. A fictional retest on the afternoon after storm 9, whose morning sample read 260, came back at 60 colonies, below the limit, while the sign still said closed.
4. The rule ignores where the rain fell. A storm over the far side of the watershed sends much less runoff into the swim cove than the same rain over Shore Road.
5. Closing the beach does nothing about the cause. Fencing the pasture stream crossing, sweeping Shore Road before storms, and keeping the lawn less attractive to geese would lower the counts themselves.
6. Signs that are wrong often get ignored. Lifeguards reported swimmers entering the water on two closed days that later tested clean.