It’s Easy to Check Out Beach Stats on the Web Before Hitting the Waves

How safe is the water at Southern California’s beaches?

A quick stop on the Internet provides the answer. Several local agencies publish Web sites that detail bacterial contamination at area beaches.

“It’s been very useful,” said Steve Herbert, a local diver who, with his friends, regularly checks the Los Angeles County site to see whether dive locations are suitable. “I was alerted to it by a county lifeguard and added it to our Web site five months ago.”

L.A. County’s site, at https://lapublichealth.org/eh/progs/envirp/rechlth/ehrecocdata.cfm, lists letter grades for 57 beaches. The information is updated twice daily, Monday through Friday, said Richard Kabajian, chief of recreation health programs for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Three types of bacteria are measured at each location, and a grade is computed based on a 30-day average of measurements.

“If it just meets state standards, we give it a C, and it goes from there,” Kabajian said. Warnings are posted for each beach where bacteria exceeded the state standard during the last reading.

Bacterial contamination can cause a variety of illnesses, including diarrhea.

“Nobody wants to get sick, so anyone should keep an eye on this,” he said. “But in particular, the elderly, the very young, people who are immuno-compromised or having therapy of some kind and pregnant women would be more affected.”

Experts recommend staying out of the water for as long as 72 hours after a rainstorm because of higher bacteria levels in storm water runoff, which flows into the ocean. And beaches are closed whenever there’s a known chemical or sewage spill.

Information is available online for other counties as well. Heal the Bay, a local environmental group, publishes a Beach Report Card for all Southern California counties at https://www.healthebay.org/baymap.

Heal the Bay’s site includes the latest grade for each beach and as many as three years’ worth of weekly county and municipal readings. The site also presents its information on interactive maps, unlike the government-run Web sites.

Start by clicking on a county, then click on the beach you’re planning to visit to get the latest grade and past readings.

“If you’re a Los Angeles County family that’s going down to San Diego for the weekend, you can look at our Web site and find water quality at Mission Bay, Coronado or Del Mar,” said James Alamillo, beach report manager for Heal the Bay.

“It’s a one-stop shop for people in Southern California, when they are going to the beach, to find out what the water quality is like.”

Heal the Bay’s site will add coverage for the rest of the state by this summer, Alamillo said.

However, Alamillo cautioned that these ratings reflect rolling one-month averages, rather than up-to-the-minute results. Still, the information is helpful.

“If you see that for the past 52 weeks, this place has gotten A’s, you’re going to feel more confident . . . going to that beach,” Alamillo said. “But if you see another beach that’s getting predominantly Fs, in terms of water quality, then you’ll be a bit more skeptical because, more likely, the water quality’s going to be poor the day you go.”

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Robert Niles is a content producer for latimes.com.

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