Beach Monitoring & Notification

Improving public health and environmental protection for United States beaches.

The Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Program focuses on the following five areas to meet the goals of improving public health and environmental protection for beach goers and providing the public with information about the quality of their beach water:

• strengthening beach standards and testing
• providing faster laboratory test methods
• predicting pollution
• investing in health and methods research
• informing the public

Recent Additions

• EPA's Annual Beach Report: 2011 Swimming Season (June 2012)
• Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act; Availability of BEACH Act Grants | Print Version (PDF) (5 pp, 168K, About PDF) (February 6, 2012) 
• EPA Grants Available to Implement Beach Monitoring and Public Notification Programs in 2011 (January 31, 2012)
• Information Collection Request; Reporting Requirements for BEACH Act Grants (Renewal) | Print Version (PDF) (2 pp, 153K, About PDF) (January 23, 2012)
• EPA's Beach Report: 2010 Swimming Season (May 2011)
• 2011 National Beach Conference (March 15-17, 2011)

Features

• Clean Beaches Plan
  • Our two major goals:
    1. promote recreational water quality programs nationwide, and
    2. create scientific improvements that support timely recreational water monitoring and reporting.
• Grants
  • Awarded to eligible coastal and Great Lakes states, territories, and tribes to develop and implement beach monitoring and notification programs
• Annual Beach Notification Summaries
  • Yearly information on beach water quality monitoring, beach advisories and closings, pollution sources, and state and local beach program contacts
• Find your Beach
  • Find the latest information on your beach that states have sent to EPA
• Recreational Water Quality Criteria
  • Find the latest information on EPA's plans to develop new or revised recreational water criteria.

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