Water Quality Monitoring
IS YOUR WATER CLEAN?
Miami Waterkeeper tests and reports the bacteria levels of your favorite waterways every week. We also make it easy for you to access these results and the Department of Health’s (DOH's) Healthy Beaches testing results on our free app called Swim Guide.
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.
Interested in water quality at a site near you?
You can sponsor water quality monitoring at any of our current sites or suggest a new one. Your sponsorship provides funding for the laboratory supplies, equipment, and experienced staff that make our water quality monitoring program possible. To acknowledge your sponsorship, you can have a banner ad and link to your website on our Swim Guide app, which is visited by thousands of users. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.
Thank you to our Sponsors:
