MINEOLA, N.Y. -- Several New York beaches closed down by medical debris were reopened today as the New York City parks commissioner took a sunrise dip and declared the waste actually was refuse from 'local junkies.'
City health and parks officials touring the beaches said there were no new sightings of medical debris and that all 14.9 miles of city shoreline are safe for bathing, including the beach at Far Rockaway, which was closed Friday.
On Long Island, Jones Beach was reopened to bathers at 4 p.m. Friday and Robert Moses at 4:25 p.m. after the tides were observed and helicopter flights over both beaches revealed a complete absence of floating medical debris.
East of Jones Beach, Oyster Bay beach was reopened. Two of the Babylon town beaches were reopened for swimming while two others remained open only tosunbathers.
State health officials were still trying to determine whether the medical waste washing up on Long Island and New York City beaches was 'the flotsam of society' or the result of illegal dumping.
'We are madly trying to identify where its (the waste) is coming from,' said Peter Slocum, a spokesman for the state Health Department. 'We don't know whether it's simply the flotsam of society spilling over into our waters, a carter doing something illegal or an institution doing something in a slipshod matter. Everybody is plucking through the garbage to find out something.'
But City Parks Commissioner Henry Stern went swimming in the water in Far Rockaway, Queens, and declared, 'The beach looks normal and the water feels great.
He said officials were investigating whether some of the syringes that washed ashore were discarded by heroin or cocaine users who shoot up on the beach boardwalks.
'We have inspected the debris collected over the last several days and have concluded that it was not waterborne,' he said. 'The coast is clear. It is safe to go back in the water.
'There were syringes that were found but we believe they were discarded by local junkies rather than washed ashore as medical waste. There weren't so many needles. We have found only a half dozen in seven miles of beachfront over three days,' he said.
Health officials were collecting samples of the waste to try to track its origin. One vial was discovered labeled with a patient's name and June 1988 written on it.
New York State laws, described as some of the most stringent in the nation, were tightened over the past three years and hospitals can be fined up to $25,000 for illegal dumping of infectious waste. Over the past three years, hospitals have paid $700,000 in fines for not disposing of the waste properly, said Kenneth Raske of the Greater New York Hospital Association.
Raske said he did not believe local hospitals were guilty of the dumping.
The waste must be incinerated or disposed of in specially designated land fills, but there are not enough land fills or incinerators, said state health officials.
'Many hospitals have their own incinerators, but they are too old and they are using garbage haulers instead,' Slocum said. 'The garbage business is plagued by reports of midnight dumping, but there is no evidence that that is the case here.'
