Overall
Results
The
overall water quality at California beaches this
past summer was OK. Of the 448 monitoring locations
throughout
California, 397 locations (89%) received very good-to-excellent
water quality marks (357 As and 40 Bs). There were
51 locations (11%) that received fair-to-poor water
quality
marks (22 Cs, 10 Ds and 19 Fs). Overall, California’s
summer beach water quality was about the same as
last year, and slightly better than 2001.
There
were a number of Beach Bummers (locations with very
poor dry weather
water quality) this summer (please see the sidebar
on the right side of this page). These beaches received
very poor grades due to their
periodic
exceedances
of indicator
bacteria thresholds. These thresholds are based on
the prescribed standards set in the California Department
of Health Service's Beach Bathing Water Standards.
Beaches
that exceeded multiple indicator thresholds on a
given day received lower grades than those beaches
that exceeded
just one indicator threshold.
For
overall and county-by-county grade statistics, please
see the California
Grade Summary page.
For county grades, please see the County
Analyses page.
This
is the first California Summer Beach Report Card
to include water quality information for Humboldt
and San Mateo counties. Although water quality monitoring
programs exist in Del Norte, Mendocino, Marin and
San Francisco counties, Heal the Bay was not able
to obtain their data for this analysis. Heal the
Bay plans to include their water quality monitoring
information by Spring 2004.
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