On June 22, 2026, Georgia Public Broadcasting reported what residents of Georgia's coast have suspected for years: three of the state's most beloved barrier island beaches — Tybee Island, St. Simons Island, and Jekyll Island — are contaminated with fecal bacteria at levels that violate federal water quality standards.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division's draft 2026 303(d) list — the state's official inventory of polluted waterways under the Clean Water Act — added 15 miles of beach to the impaired waters list. The culprit: enterococci, a fecal indicator bacterium found in the intestines of warm-blooded animals, including humans. When enterococci show up in beach water above EPA thresholds, it means something is delivering fecal matter to the ocean. Swimmers face increased risk of gastrointestinal illness, ear infections, skin infections, and respiratory problems.
The EPD says it hasn't yet identified the specific sources. But the sources aren't a mystery. They're the same sources that have been contaminating Georgia's coastal waters for years — and in some cases, decades.
Tybee Island: 50-Year-Old Pipes and 24,000 Gallons of Sewage
Tybee Island's wastewater infrastructure tells the story of a system built for a small beach town that became a year-round tourist destination.
The island's sanitary sewer pipes are 50 to 80 years old. When it rains hard, groundwater and stormwater infiltrate the aging system through cracks, deteriorated joints, and illegal connections where homeowners tied yard drains into sewer laterals. The system becomes hydraulically overloaded. Sewage comes out the top.
This isn't hypothetical. After one heavy weekend rainstorm, approximately 24,000 gallons of sewage and stormwater overflowed into Horsepen Creek — a tidal waterway that feeds directly into the waters where people swim. The City of Tybee Island issued a public statement confirming "multiple Sanitary Sewer Overflows (SSOs) across the City" due to hydraulic overload. The EPA required water quality sampling before the area could reopen.
Tybee's mayor acknowledged the drainage system is "very poor and does need to be upgraded" and referenced roughly $5 million in bonds issued for stormwater projects as part of a 10-year improvement plan. The city has also begun an inflow and infiltration (I&I) reduction program to identify and repair the pathways that allow stormwater into the sanitary system.
But here's the math that matters: the infrastructure is failing now. The fixes are on a 10-year timeline. Meanwhile, tourism keeps growing, impervious surfaces keep expanding, and every heavy rain overwhelms a system that was undersized before most of today's beachgoers were born.
A Georgia Southern University thesis studying Tybee's water quality found enterococci levels were 50.7% higher at the beach location with the heaviest human activity. Bacteria concentrations were even higher in tidal pools than in open water — stagnant, shallow water acts as an incubator. The researcher noted that Coastal Georgia's water quality challenges are compounded by sea-level rise, population growth, and aging wastewater infrastructure.
St. Simons Island and Glynn County: Recurring Overflows
St. Simons Island's wastewater is managed by the Brunswick-Glynn County Joint Water and Sewer Commission (JWSC). The system serves both the island and the mainland, and it has a documented history of sanitary sewer overflows — from lift station failures, main breaks, and grease blockages sending thousands of gallons of untreated wastewater into drainage ditches, marshes, and creeks that feed St. Simons Sound.
Georgia EPD has issued Consent Orders and Administrative Orders against Glynn County entities for repeated wastewater violations, requiring corrective infrastructure projects, SSO reduction plans, inflow/infiltration studies, and civil penalties for unauthorized discharges. These aren't one-time events. They're a pattern — a system repeatedly overwhelmed by the same problems: old pipes, too many connections, too much stormwater getting into the sanitary system.
Compounding the sewer problems are the areas of Glynn County that aren't on sewer at all. Significant portions of the county — including parts of the barrier islands and coastal fringe developments — rely on septic systems. In the low-lying, sandy, high-water-table soils of a barrier island, septic systems face conditions they were never designed for. Drainfields sit close to groundwater. Groundwater connects to tidal creeks. Fecal bacteria migrates from yard to marsh to beach.
Georgia's coastal nonpoint source management plans explicitly identify onsite septic systems as a significant source of fecal bacteria and nutrients in Chatham and Glynn Counties. But no public source provides an island-by-island count of how many septic systems remain in service. The data gap itself is telling.
Jekyll Island: The Quietest Warning
Jekyll Island — a state-owned barrier island managed by the Jekyll Island Authority — is the third beach on the impaired list. Jekyll has a smaller year-round population than Tybee or St. Simons, but it draws roughly 3 million visitors annually. Its wastewater and stormwater systems face the same fundamental pressures: aging infrastructure, storm-driven overloads, and the relentless hydrology of a barrier island where the water table is never far below the surface.
Beach advisories on Jekyll aren't new. The Glynn County Health Department has issued bacterial contamination advisories for Jekyll Island beaches repeatedly over the years. The pattern is consistent: elevated enterococci after rain events, advisories posted, advisories lifted when levels recede, and then the cycle repeats.
What Georgia Is Doing — and What It Means
The EPD has begun developing Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for the impaired beach segments in the Satilla and Savannah River Basins. A TMDL is, in plain terms, a pollution budget — a calculation of the maximum amount of a pollutant a waterway can receive and still meet water quality standards, with that budget allocated among point sources (like wastewater plants), nonpoint sources (like septic systems and stormwater), and a margin of safety.
Draft TMDL reports for both basins were released in May 2026. Public comment is open until July 16.
TMDLs are an important regulatory tool. They establish legally enforceable limits that can drive infrastructure investment, permit conditions, and corrective action. But a TMDL is a document, not a pipe. It tells you how much pollution the water can handle. It doesn't fix the 70-year-old sewer main or replace the failing septic drainfield or build the stormwater retention pond.
The gap between identifying the problem and fixing it is where coastal communities have been stuck for years. Georgia EPD acknowledges it has "had to delay the development of TMDLs the last couple of years" due to staffing issues. If the state can't staff the paperwork, the infrastructure timeline is even further out.
The Bigger Picture
Georgia's impaired beach listing is not an isolated event. Nationally, the Clean Water Act's 303(d) process has documented the same pattern in coastal communities from New Jersey to Florida to California: aging wastewater infrastructure built for smaller populations, septic systems in unsuitable soils, stormwater systems that were designed before climate change intensified rainfall events, and regulatory frameworks that identify problems faster than governments can fix them.
What makes Georgia's situation notable is the visibility. Tybee Island, St. Simons, and Jekyll Island are among the most popular beach destinations in the southeastern United States. Millions of families visit every year. When those beaches fail water quality standards for fecal bacteria, it's not an abstract regulatory finding. It's a public health warning for people in the water right now.
The sources of the contamination — wastewater overflows, septic failures, stormwater runoff — are not mysterious. They're infrastructure problems with infrastructure solutions. But infrastructure costs money, takes political will, and requires a level of urgency that regulatory listings alone don't seem to generate.
Georgia has identified the problem. The public comment period is open until July 16. The question is whether the state will move from identifying impaired waters to actually fixing the systems that impaired them — before another tourist season passes with fecal bacteria in the surf.
Public Comment: Georgia EPD's draft TMDLs for enterococci in the Satilla and Savannah River Basins are open for public comment until July 16, 2026. Draft documents are available at epd.georgia.gov.
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