We provide grant money to states, tribes, and local governments to protect beachgoers from contaminated water at coastal and Great Lakes beaches. We're also developing tools to better measure, identify, and address microbes in recreational waters and to better understand how these pollutants affect people’s health.

• Create national standards and criteria (indicators) for pathogens (bacteria/ microbes) and work with states and tribes on adopting protections for their waterbodies.
  • Recommended
    • Bacteria criteria and guidance for implementation
    • Research
  • Regulatory
    • Final Water Quality Standards Bacteria Rule
• Create EPA-approved test methods
  • Methods to detect biological pollutants
  • Approved CWA Microbiological Test Methods
  • Improved Enumeration Methods for the Recreational Water Quality Indicators: Enterococci and Escherichia coli
• Give grants to fund state monitoring programs
• Compile a list of beaches
• Conduct routine and annual sanitary surveys
• Use research and development to obtain better environmental indicators and methods of detection
  • Epidemiological study - how water quality affects people's health
  • The EMPACT Beaches Project: Results from a Study on Microbiological Monitoring in Recreational Waters (PDF) (85 pp, 2 MB)
• Predict beach conditions through modeling