United States
Environmental Protection
.Agency
Office of Water EPA - 820-F-14-009
Mail code 4305T
July 2014
National Beach Guidance and
Required Performance Criteria for Grants, 2014 Edition
Summary
EPA has published online an updated
National Beach Guidance and Required
Performance Criteria for Grants (Beach
Guidance). This guidance aims to get safer
standards in place for recreational waters and
pave the way for improved beach monitoring
and public notification of beach advisories or
closures. The grant requirements in this 2014
Beach Guidance document will be
incorporated in beach grants awarded to states
and tribes henceforth, and supersede those
grant requirements in our previously issued
2002 document.
Background
In 1997, EPA created the beach program to
assist state and local environmental and public
health officials in reducing the risk of disease
to swimmers at our nation's beaches. Since
then, EPA and the states and tribes have made
significant progress in protecting public health
at our nation's beaches. We established the
infrastructure for state and local beach
monitoring and notification programs to warn
beachgoers when water quality is unsafe. We
also made great strides in improving the
quality and quantity of information available
to the public on beach waters.
The updated Beach Guidance describes the
required performance criteria that an eligible
coastal or Great Lakes state, territorial, tribal,
or local government has to meet to receive
grants to implement coastal recreation water
monitoring and public notification programs
under section 406(b) of the Clean Water Act,
as amended by the Beaches Environmental
Assessment and Coastal Health Act of 2000
(BEACH Act).
EPA's Goals for the Revised Document
EPA revised the 2002 guidance to meet two
main goals: 1) to get safer standards in place
for coastal recreational waters, and 2) to pave
the way for improved beach monitoring and
public awareness of water quality problems.
The 2014 Beach Guidance establishes
performance criteria consistent with the Clean
Water Act requirement for states and tribes to
adopt new or revised recreational water
quality standards. EPA approval of new or
revised state and tribal standards will put in
place public health protections from EPA's
2012 Recreational Water Quality Criteria
(RWQC).
The recommendations and requirements in the
2014 Beach Guidance raise the bar for beach
monitoring and public awareness. Following
the recommendations in this guidance will
lead states and tribes into a new era
characterized by improvements in identifying
sources of fecal pollution, disseminating
information to the public, and supporting site-
specific solutions for protecting public health.
Key Changes from the 2002 Document
EPA published draft revisions to the Beach
Guidance in April 2014 that included
numerous changes from the 2002 edition, and
asked for comments. The comments received
focused mainly on concerns about EPA
proposing that grantees be required to use the
Beach Action Value recommended in the
2012 RWQC document to trigger beach
advisories.
The final version of the 2014 Beach
Guidance:
- Requires grant recipients to develop a
schedule to adopt new or revised recreational
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water quality standards pursuant to Clean
Water Act section 303(i)(l)(B).
- Requires grant recipients to develop a
schedule for identifying and applying
EPA's Beach Action Value, or justifying an
alternative value, to trigger public
notification of beach advisories or closures.
- Updates science on pathogens, health
concerns, and fecal indicator bacteria.
- Makes sanitary surveys a central part of
states' and tribes' risk-based evaluation and
classification of their beaches.
- Provides detailed guidance on how states
and tribes can develop their List of Beaches.
- Strengthens the link between prioritizing
beaches and developing a tiered monitoring
plan that reflects those priorities.
- Summarizes the major findings of EPA's
2010 review of scientific studies on beach
monitoring.
- Updates monitoring procedures to include
quantitative polymerase chain reaction
(qPCR) for same-day results.
- Expands discussion on integrating predictive
models, which facilitate same-day
notification, into a monitoring plan.
- Provides guidance on when to issue or
remove a notification.
requirements, but the 2014 Beach Guidance
contains a wealth of information and many
best management practices that those states
might
still want to follow. While the BEACH Act
does not apply to inland waters, the general
approach and principles in this guidance
would also be applicable to inland beaches,
although some modifications might be
appropriate.
For More Information
For more information on the National Beach
Guidance and Required Performance Criteria
for Grants, please contact Rick Hoffmann
(202-566-0388 or hoffmann.rick@epa.gov).
To view the guidance document go to:
http://www2.epa.gov/beach-tech/national-
beach-guidance-and-required-performance-
criteria-grants
For general information about beaches go to:
http://www2.epa.gov/beaches
For information about a specific beach go to:
http: //www2 .epa. gov/beache s/find-
information-about-your-beach
To find your EPA Regional or state beach
program representative go to:
http: //www2 .epa. gov/beache s/state -and-local-
beach-programs
- Discusses new public notification and
communication tools that support same-day
notification, such as social media, email,
websites, and text messages.
- Adds specific requirements to the
performance criteria, such as posting
monitoring data on a website to ensure its
wide public availability.
What about beaches that are not along the
coast or Great Lakes?
States that are not eligible for BEACH Act
grants are not required to comply with these
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