Ohio's Lake Erie beaches last year posed the greatest health threat to swimmers of all the beaches in the country, according to a report released Tuesday.

A total of 22 percent of Ohio's beach water samples taken in 2006 exceeded the state's daily maximum bacterial standards more than any other state and that posed a significant health threat to swimmers, said the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The national environmental group analyzed data collected from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on 3,500 beaches in 30 states in compiling its 17th annual report on beach water quality.

Nationally, there were a record-high 25,643 days of beach closings and advisories in 2006, an increase of 28 percent from a year earlier, the eco-group said.

Health advisory days at Ohio's beaches more than tripled from 182 in 2005 to 629 in rainy 2006, the report said.

The problem can be traced to sewage and contaminated runoff from outdated, under-funded sewage plants in northern Ohio, said Henry Henderson, director of the NRDC's Midwest office.

Ohio's beaches that failed most often to meet bacteria standards were three in Cuyahoga County: Cleveland's Villa Angela, failed 44 percent of the time; Euclid Creek in Cleveland, 42 percent; and Huntington Beach in Bay Village, 32 percent.

Other totals included: Mentor Headlands State Park in Lake County, 25 percent; Maumee Bay State Park near Toledo, 24 percent; Edgewater Park in Cleveland, 20 percent; East Harbor State Park in Ottawa County, 8 percent; and South Bass Island State Park near Put-in-Bay, zero.

Ohio has 21 public beaches that line 7.3 miles of Lake Erie. The Ohio Department of Health monitors 15 Lake Erie beaches. Local health departments test additional beaches.

Rainfall in the Akron area in 2006 was nearly 51/2 inches above normal, and that resulted in additional runoff from streams like the Cuyahoga River into Lake Erie and more-than-usual sewer overflows.

''A summer rainstorm should not have to mean that endless amounts of pollution are washed down to the beach, or that sewers will overflow,'' said Nancy Stoner of the NRDC's Clean water Project. ''We can fix leaky pipes. We can require coastal developers to maintain vegetation to absorb rain. The solutions are out there.''

After Ohio, the states with the greatest beach health problems in 2006 were Indiana, Illinois, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Maryland and New York.

The report is available at http://www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/ttw/titinx.asp.

The Ohio findings are not a surprise, said Kristy Meyer, Lake Erie program director for the Columbus-based Ohio Environmental Council.

Congress needs to fund existing plans to protect and preserve the Great Lakes, and Ohio needs to do more to protect Lake Erie and human health, she said.