First, two Maryland beaches made a national list of the filthiest in the country.   Now, one has won an award for being one of the cleanest anywhere.

The Clean Beaches Council today (8/28) announced that Assteague Island National Seashore's north beach is being named one of its "2007 Blue Wave Beaches," the cleanest bathing areas in the country.

Also on the list are Fenwick Island Beach in Delaware and the Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina.

That's the good news. The bad: Pollution at the nation’s 3,500 ocean, lake and bay beaches resulted in more than 25,000 closing or swimming advisory days last year, the highest number in the 17 years that records have been kept, according to the Beach Council, an advocacy  organzation.

“The number of beach closings announced this summer was phenomenal, making our work that much more important to beach goers,” stated Walter McLeod, President of the Clean Beaches Council.  “Even though millions of Americans spend time at beaches, they can use this list as one of several benchmarks to make a good, clean beach vacation choice for the future.  Our goal is to identify a sample of beaches that demonstrate a strong commitment to protecting the environment and beach wildlife.”

The City of Chicago won an award for its "groundbreaking work using DNA analysis to identify non-point sources of fecal contaminated beaches."

Chicago's beaches, even downtown, are clean enough for swimming and sunbathing -- notably unlike Baltimore's harbor. A major difference: Chicago spent heaps of money about a century ago to reverse the flow of the Chicago River, so that all of its waste is flushed away from Lake Michigan, downstate toward the Mississippi River.  (Perhaps Baltimore could reverse the flow of the Jones Falls to send all of the city's waste flushing into Ruxton?)

Earlier this month, the Natural Resources Defense Council released its annual report card on beach health.  This environmental group declared that two of the unhealthiest beaches in the country last year were on the Chesapeake Bay.  One was Hacks Point, a small community beach on the shores of the Bohemia River in Cecil County. It was labelled a "beach bum," because bacteria levels exceeded federal health standards 60 percent of the times it was tested by the government last summer, the NRDC report said.

The other dirty beach highlighted by the NRDC was the Bay Shore Campground and Beach, a private recreational area near Rock Hall in Kent County.