California Beach Water Quality Information Page

California has some of the most popular beaches in the country. Over 150 million day visits are generated by tourists and residents use them annually to swim, wade, surf, and dive. Beach visitors spend over $10 billion each year in California. Beach water quality monitoring and strong pollution prevention measures are critical for protecting beach goers from waterborne diseases. California has the most extensive and comprehensive monitoring and regulatory program for beaches in the nation. Monitoring is performed by local health agencies in sixteen different coastal and San Francisco Bay Area counties, publicly owned sewage treatment plants, other dischargers along the coastal zone, environmental groups and numerous citizen-monitoring groups. More background information can be found here.

Posting and Closures

Local health agencies are responsible for issuing advisories (postings) and closures. An advisory is issued when the results of testing indicate that one or more bacterial levels exceed the Ocean Water Contact Sport Standards issued by the California Department of Health Services (HS Code 115875-115915). Posted advisories usually are placed as signs at the beach and often along access points to the beach saying that swimming may cause illness. Beach closures are the result of sewage spills that will or have the potential to reach coastal waters. Closures are issued immediately upon notification by the agency responsible for the spill and closure signs are posted along the beach. For beach closures, the water remains off limits for wading, swimming and surfing until bacterial standards are met. Information about current posting (advisory) and closure events are also available for most local health agencies on their web sites and telephone hotlines (local health agencies). The report links below provide historical data on California beach water quality.

California Beach Water Quality Reports

To provide a report card evaluation of water quality at coastal beaches throughout California, the State Water Board has endorsed the following websites for weekly and annual considerations.

• U.S. EPA Beach Advisory and Closing Online Notification (BEACON)
  The U.S. EPA's database provides public access to water quality monitoring data, beach closures, and swimming advisories for California's coastal beaches, with monitoring data updated weekly.
• Heal The Bay Weekly Beach Report Card
  This report provides a third party rating system that evaluates beach water quality in California based on the previous 30 days of monitoring results. This report card is updated weekly.

California Beach Funding and Grant Programs

California is committed to monitoring, improving, and protecting beaches along its coast. In addition to monitoring our coastal water quality, California is committed to improving and protecting beaches along its coast. In 1997, California created a beach monitoring program, referred to as AB411, that mandates water quality sampling and reporting requirements for local health agencies and the State Water Board currently allocates approximately $2.3 million annually to the local health agencies based on their program size and expenses.

In addition to monitoring our coastal water quality, California also invested an additional $100 million in Clean Beach Initiative grants to fund local projects that reduce bacterial contamination along the coast. The State has also funded research to develop more rapid detection methods for knowing when to post beaches, tracking the sources of contamination, and studies to better understand the relationship between bacterial indicators and incidence of disease.