Water Quality Monitoring

IS YOUR WATER CLEAN?

At Miami Waterkeeper, ensuring the safety of your favorite waterways is our top priority. We conduct regular water quality testing to provide you with up-to-date information on the bacteria levels in the areas you love to swim and play. You can easily access these results, along with the Department of Health's (DOH) Healthy Beaches testing data, using the free Swim Guide app or website.

Miami Waterkeeper and the DOH perform water sampling every Monday morning, with the latest test results becoming available by Tuesday afternoon. In cases where a site exhibits high bacteria levels, we are committed to re-running our samples daily until the issue is resolved.

Miami Waterkeeper and DOH sampling typically occurs on Monday mornings; the latest test results are available on Tuesday afternoon. If a site has high bacteria levels, we will re-run our site’s samples again every day until the issue is resolved. 

EPA has set the following standards for water considered safe for swimming, which are used by DOH and Miami Waterkeeper:

0-70 CFU/MPN per 100 mL enterococci per sample: Safe for swimming

70+ CFU/MPN per 100 mL enterococci per sample: Not safe for swimming

Learn more about our water testing and what the results mean here. 

How do I find the latest water quality results? Check out Swim Guide!

You can download the app here and visit the website here.

Swim Guide will help you to identify at a glance which beaches are safe for swimming (Green) and which have current water quality problems (Red). Some sites are also in “special status” if pollution or safety events mean that you shouldn’t swim.   

Swim Guide has become a popular tool for water lovers in South Florida. In a recent evaluation, out of over 7,000 Swim Guide sites across the world, 4 out of the top 5 visited sites in Swim Guide were in the Miami area. 

  Red means the water at the site has water quality issues or there is an emergency.

 Green means the beach’s most recent test results met relevant water quality standards.

 Red means the beach’s most recent test results failed to meet water quality standards.

Thank you to these funders for supporting our water quality monitoring program: