The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection monitors water quality along the NJ coast. Public Recreational Bathing Beaches are regulated by the State Sanitary Code and are part of the Cooperative Coastal Monitoring Program. The DEP recognizes that primary recreation is occurring at areas other than regulated Public Recreational Bathing Beaches. For this reason, the DEP has begun Environmental Coastal Monitoring (ECM) to assess water quality at various locations.

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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.