“Know Before You Go”™ About Beach Water Quality This Summer
by Larry Cummings
Published on May 24th, 2006
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Phoenix, AZ—Memorial Day weekend kicks off the official beach season and the Earth 911 Beach Water Quality section is ready to help you “Know Before You Go”™ about beach water quality at your favorite beach.
“Beach goers don’t always realize that swimming conditions may not be safe when they visit their favorite beaches,” said Bob Peeples, Beach Manager with Earth 911, the nation’s portal for local environmental action and information. “Weather events or other human-caused conditions may make it dangerous to be in the water.”
The Earth 911 Beaches area offers water quality information as well as safety information about healthy swimming, rip currents, red tide and more. Earth 911 provides information generated and uploaded directly by local government agencies.
This partnership effort between dozens of states and communities and several groups, including the U.S. EPA and Earth 911, provides you with specific information regarding the most recent water quality conditions at your local beaches.
The Beach Water Quality section of Earth 911 was established in 2001 through an EPA grant to help provide coastal states with the beach water quality public notification tools that are required as part of the B.E.A.C.H. Act of 2000.
“We use the Earth 911 Beaches area as it makes it easy for us to keep our resident and visiting beach goers informed about beach water quality conditions,” said J.D. Potts, Project Manager with the North Carolina Recreational Water Quality Program.
The Earth 911 Beach Water Quality area also gives you access to community-specific actions that you can take to help keep local beaches, coastal waters, and lakes, streams, and rivers clean and safe.
“Surfers and swimmers in San Diego County enjoy the opt-in E-mail ‘Beach Alert’ that beach regulars can use to keep them informed about beach closures or advisories as they go into effect, and an area to let us know about things that they see, hear and smell at the beach,” said Clay Clifton, Environmental Health Specialist with the County of San Diego Department of Environmental Health. “The ‘Let Us Know’ area has been a very useful educational tool for both our beach goers and our beach managers. It lets us know about unusual conditions at our local beaches that we may not be aware of on an hourly basis.”
Be safe and healthy this summer beach season. Make Earth 911 Beaches your official “Know Before You Go”™ authority, and sign-up for Beach Alerts at the Earth 911 Beach Water Quality section.
