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An Empirical Look At The Dirtiest Beaches In Chicago

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 17, 2014 9:38PM

Some beaches along the lakefront are pristine postcards of cleanliness and tranquility while on others you can’t step in the sand without worrying about whether you’re stepping on discarded cigarette butts or, worse, slicing your feet open on broken glass buried in the sand. And that’s before reaching the waterline to discover you can’t take a dip in the lake because of poor water quality.

Curbed Chicago editor AJ LaTrace decided to put together a list of Chicago’s five dirtiest beaches using a combination of water pollution levels published by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a cross-section of Yelp reviews of Chicago beaches containing the words “dirty,” “garbage” and “trash.” OK, maybe the latter isn’t as empirical a measure as using water quality tables but it even clean beaches can have swimming bans. Using the Yelp reviews is a good way of winnowing the number of beaches down to the more popular ones along the lake—your cesspools of assholishness, if you will.

LaTrace listed the five dirtiest beaches in Chicago to be Montrose, North Avenue, Fullerton, South Shore and Rainbow Beaches. Montrose earns the top nod because it’s a popular spot for people wanting to do some grilling and its always in demand dog beach. It also is home to some of the worst water quality levels along the lakefront. Fullerton and North Avenue Beaches are among the most crowded on the lakefront and, ergo, contain some of the highest amounts of trash. (And garbage, too.)

South Shore and Rainbow Beaches earn their spots due to their proximity to the former U.S. Steel works site and, further south, other industrial sites like the BP Whiting Refinery. These beaches aren’t as packed as the other three but the water quality is such we wouldn’t want to take a swim there, no matter how beautiful the views of the skyline may be. In fact, the NRDC says South Shore beach may have as poor water quality as Montrose.