The Department of Environmental Protection administers the New Jersey Cooperative Coastal Monitoring Program. From mid-May to mid-September, local health departments monitor recreational beach water quality. On this web site, you will find current beach status, water quality sample results, reports of beach advisories and beach closings, information on other events that affect beaches and daily updates from our coastal surveillance flights.

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The New Jersey State Sanitary Code’s water quality standard for bathing beaches is determined by the concentration of the indicator bacteria, enterococci. The standard requires that the concentration of bacteria not exceed 104 colonies of Enterococci bacteria per 100 milliliters of sample. An exceedance of the standard may indicate a pollutant impact to bathing waters.

There are two categories of actions that take place when there is an exceedance of the water quality standard; Advisories and Closings.

Advisories:

Any initial sample that exceeds the water quality standard requires that the local health agency issue a swimming advisory at the bathing beach where the sample was collected. Swimming Advisories warn the public of potentially unhealthy water conditions. Additional sampling is conducted until water quality results are again within the standard.

Beach Closings:

Beaches are closed if two consecutive samples collected at a bathing beach exceed the water quality standard. Beach closings remain in effect until subsequent sampling indicates bacteria levels are again below the standard.

Typically, advisories do not lead to beach closings. For more details, click here.