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Environmental Protectio
\r hI	Agency
EPA's Beach Report:
2020 Swimming Season
Introduction
This report summarizes information that states, territories, and tribes with coastal and Great
Lakes beaches submitted to EPA reporting beach closings and advisories for the 2020
swimming season. The information in this report covers January 1 through December 31, 2020
and includes data submitted to EPA as of July 20, 2021. Two territories, American Samoa and
U.S. Virgin Islands, submitted partial data sets before this report was created. A version of this
report incorporating any updated data since this report was released can be generated at
https://ofmpub.epa. gov/apex/beacon2/f?p=BEACON2:DNR.
The Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act of 2000 authorizes
EPA to provide grants to eligible states, territories, and tribes to monitor their coastal
recreational waters for bacteria that indicate the possible presence of disease-causing
pathogens and to notify the public when there is a potential risk to public health. EPA awarded
approximately $9.2 million in grants in 2019 for the 2020 season. The BEACH Act requires that
grant recipients report their monitoring and notifications data for coastal recreational waters to
EPA and that EPA maintain an electronic database of that data, accessible to the public. This
report is based on that data. Information on grouped or individual jurisdictions or beaches can
be found at https://watersgeo.epa.gov/BEACON2/about.html.
2020 Swimming Season Results
States, territories, and tribes take water samples to monitor the water at swimming beaches to
see if levels of specific indicator bacteria (for example, enterococci) exceed the water quality
standards or beach advisory thresholds that apply to that water. "Program beaches" have, at
minimum, a program to notify the public if swimming in the coastal water is unsafe, and most
also have a program to routinely monitor the water quality. There are 6,349 coastal and Great
Lakes beaches in the United States, and 5,055 (80%) of those are "program beaches." In 2020,
68 percent of the program beaches were monitored for bacteria. Chart 1 shows the number of
beaches that were monitored and the total number of program beaches in each state, territory,
and tribe in 2020. For information on how COVID-19 impacted the number of monitored
beaches, see "What impact did COVID-19 have on the nation's beaches?"
When monitoring results show exceedances for bacteria, states, territories, and tribes either
issue a beach advisory that warns people of possible risks of swimming or a beach closing that
closes the beach to public swimming. The states and local agencies that do not routinely
monitor water quality at program beaches use models or policies (for example, issue an
advisory after a certain amount of rainfall) as a basis for issuing notification actions at beaches.
These advisories or closures typically stay in effect until monitoring shows that levels of bacteria
comply with applicable water quality standards or beach advisory thresholds.
Office of Water
EPA 820-R-21-004
August 2021
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Chart 1: Number of total and monitored coastal and Great Lake program beaches by
state/territory/tribe
*s>
Commonwealth of
Northern Marianas
83 83
Tribes:
Grand Portage Band 12 12
Makah Tribe	115
Bad River Band 15 15
Swinomish Tribe 6 6
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in 2020. Stormwater runoff was the known source reported most often. Almost half (49%) of the
sources were reported as unknown.
(Note: The percentages shown on the chart do not total 100 because only whole numbers are being shown.
The numbers in parentheses are the reported number of sources associated with advisories and closures.)
How many notification actions were issued and how long did they last?
Chart 3: Reported possible sources of pollution in 2020


Unknown



Stormwater Runoff
23% (1202)


Wildlife
7% (372)


Dry-weather Runoff
5% (277)
Boat Discharge
¦ 3% (161)
Septic System Leakage
¦ 3% (143)
Sewer Line Leakage
¦ 3% (141)
Sanitary Sewer Overflow
¦ 2% (110)
Publicly Owned Treatment Works
¦ 2% (102)
Other
¦ 2% (96)
Combined Sewer Overflow
| 1% (51)
Agricultural Runoff
| 1% (34)
Algae
| 0% (16)
Concentrated Animal Feeding...
0% (2)
States, territories, and tribes issued 7,562 beach
notification actions (i.e., advisories or closings)
during the 2020 swimming season. An advisory or
closing is typically removed when follow-up water
quality monitoring shows that bacteria levels
comply with applicable water quality standards or
beach advisory thresholds. For 77 percent of the
notification actions in 2020, bacteria levels in
coastal recreational waters no longer exceeded
applicable water quality standards or beach
advisory thresholds and beaches were deemed
safe for swimming within a week (Chart 4). In
2020, 20 percent of the notification actions lasted
only one day, and 22 percent ended between one
and two days. For information on how COVID-19
impacted the duration of beach notifications, see
"What impact did COVID-19 have on the nation's
beaches?"
Chart 4: Duration of beach notification
actions in 2020
>30 days
6%
What percentage of days were beaches open and safe for swimming?
Program beaches on U.S. coasts and along the Great Lakes were open and safe for swimming
92 percent of the time in 2020. Chart 5 shows the percentage of beach days that the nation's
program beaches were open and without any advisories in years 2016 through 2020. EPA
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calculates the total available beach days and
the number of beach days with advisories or
closings to better track trends over time. To
calculate total available beach days, EPA
adds the length of the beach season (in days)
for every program beach in each state,
territory, and tribe. For 2020, EPA determined
that 726,175 beach days were associated with
the swimming seasons of the 5,055 beaches
with monitoring and/or notification programs.
Notification actions were reported on 60,115
days out of those 726,175 beach days (8%).
For information on how COVID-19 impacted
the number of days beaches were open and
safe for swimming, see "What impact did
COVID-19 have on the nation's beaches?"
What impact did COVID-19 have on the nation's beaches?
Based on additional, optional reporting information from eight states, territories, and tribes,
representing 1,607 program beaches (916 anticipated to be monitored in 2020):
•	20 (2.2%) of the beaches anticipated to be monitored were not monitored and 165 (18%)
were monitored less frequently or for a shorter season compared to 2019 due to COVID-19.
•	242 (-15%) of the program beaches had advisories or closings in 2020 resulting from
COVID-19 policies. The advisories and closures were not due to concern that anyone
would catch COVID-19 from contact with the water but instead were to slow the spread of
COVID-19 from congregating in crowds.
•	The duration of COVID-19 related actions for these 1,607 program beaches ranged from 1
to 291 days based on jurisdiction policy.
•	2.5% of the 8% of days reported with notifications or closures nationwide were due to
COVID-19 policies.
•	17,912 days were under COVID-19-related advisories and closures (15,717 advisory days,
with an additional 2,195 days of closings due to jurisdictions' COVID-19 policies).
No COVID-19 illnesses due to exposure to coastal recreational waters in 2020 have been
reported to EPA.
Where Can I Find More Information?
To find out more about what you can do to help protect beaches, visit
https://www.epa.gov/beaches/act-beach.
To find out more about what affects beach health, visit https://www.epa.gov/beaches/learn-
what-affects-beach-health.
For general information about beaches, visit https://www.epa.gov/beaches.
For current information about a specific beach, visit https://www.epa.gov/beaches/state-
territorial-tribal-and-epa-beach-program-contacts.
For beach information that states, territories, and tribes have reported to EPA, visit
http://watersgeo.epa.gov/beacon2.
Chart 5: Percent of days the nation's
program beaches were open and safe for
swimming
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
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