A new report that grades the water quality of nearly 200 beaches along the Long Island Sound, including a dozen in New York City, shows water quality improving near the majority of those beaches, except in the city.

Experts tell NY1 the mandated closing of Rikers Island can help improve the water quality.

In the biennial report by water quality advocacy group, Save the Sound, grades are given to nearly 200 beaches around the Long Island Sound based on the public health of those beaches.

Most of the beaches analyzed in the report between 2020 and 2022, 78% received a grade of B or higher.

Of a dozen beaches in the city along the Long Island Sound, Orchard Beach in the Bronx is the only public beach was given a C plus for 2022. The beach received A’s for the previous two years.

“I’m very impressed with the improvements they made on this beach because I’ve been coming here since 1970,” said beachgoer Jesus Ramos. “So I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Ana Elmowitz, who came to the beach with her family Wednesday, including Ramos, her brother, said the beach has improved greatly over the last several decades.

“It’s beautiful and the water now is different,” Elmowitz said. “Before it used to be like brown, like dark. But now, since they cleaned it and they did the improvement, I wouldn’t mind going in there.”

Of the other 11 city beaches along the Sound, which are all private, 10 received a grade of D or below — indicating poor water quality.

Sam Marquand, the clean water advocacy specialist for Save the Sound, said poor water quality is often due of sewage overflow during storms, which is due to unusual amounts of increased rainfall.

Scientists have found that this happens as a consequence of climate change.

Essentially, the hotter our climate gets, the more storms we’ll experience and the more rainfall we’ll get.

Marquand said a remedy for city beaches involves closing four 100-year-old Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities in the Upper East River.

“There’s a real opportunity for New York City to have a state-of-the-art Wastewater treatment plant there that consolidates all of the treatment plants that are generally speaking in low-income neighborhoods at the moment,” Marquand said.

Consolidate them, bring them out of those areas and bring cutting edge water treatment to that area.That cutting edge wastewater treatment plant would be built on Rikers Island.

A study currently underway looks at the feasibility once the city closes Rikers Island, as it is legally obligated to do by September 2027 because of a law passed under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Environmentalists, such as Marquand, believe the city’s questionable ability to meet that 2027 target date under Mayor Eric Adams, including several missed deadlines, is standing in the way of better water quality at city beaches along the Long Island Sound.

“Every six months, there are supposed to be land transfers where portions of land of Rikers Island that are unused are supposed to be transferred to other departments of the city and he has not done that,” he said.

NY1 reached out to City Hall to inquire about the closing of Rikers and how it may impact the proposal to consolidate the four water treatment facilities into a state-of-the-art water treatment plant on Rikers Island but has not yet received a response.