The Great Lakes Beach Association (GLBA) is a collaboration of more than 1000 local, provincial and state beach managers, working together to improve recreational beach water quality through an informal information-sharing forum. The GLBA seeks to:

• improve the immediacy and availability of data to beach managers;

• increase the knowledge and use by beach managers of sanitary survey tools, rapid testing and predictive modeling methods; and

• enhance collaboration among the beach management community (national, state, local) to make beach monitoring programs more effective and cost-efficient.