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BeachGrade

About BeachGrade

Is your beach safe to swim? An A–F Beach Safety Grade for every monitored U.S. beach.

What we do

BeachGrade turns years of government beach-monitoring data into one plain A–F Beach Safety Grade, so anyone can see how often a beach’s water crosses the safe-swimming limit before they plan a trip — instead of digging through scattered health-department pages.

We focus on U.S. public-beach water quality: swim-advisory history, bacteria-exceedance grades, and where to stay. Every page on beachgrade.org is built from the U.S. EPA BEACON (BEACH Act) program and the Water Quality Portal (WQX/STORET), cited and linkable so readers can trace any number back to its source.

Who runs this

BeachGrade is built and maintained by the BeachGrade Editorial Team. We're a small group working on making public U.S. public-beach water quality: swim-advisory history, bacteria-exceedance grades, and where to stay data easier for non-specialists to read. If you have a correction, a data tip, or a question about how a number was derived, the contact email below reaches us directly.

Who this is for

BeachGrade is built for families, swimmers, surfers, and travelers deciding which beach to visit and whether the water is clean.

Why this exists

Public data on U.S. public-beach water quality: swim-advisory history, bacteria-exceedance grades, and where to stay is technically free, but practically locked behind file formats, acronyms, and paywalled dashboards. BeachGradeexists to close that gap: take the raw federal and public-sector data, and turn it into pages a normal person can read in thirty seconds.

How we work

  • Primary source only. We pull from the U.S. EPA BEACON (BEACH Act) program and the Water Quality Portal (WQX/STORET) and cite the exact dataset and version on every page.
  • No invented numbers. If a figure is not in the underlying public data, it does not appear on beachgrade.org. We never generate synthetic statistics to fill gaps.
  • Methodology, in plain English. For each beach we pull the EPA BEACON inventory and advisory history, then gather bacteria samples (Enterococcus at saltwater and Great Lakes beaches, E. coli at other freshwater beaches) from the Water Quality Portal at nearby monitoring stations. The Beach Safety Grade is the multi-year share of samples that exceeded the EPA Beach Action Value (104 CFU/100 mL for Enterococcus, 235 for E. coli): under 3% earns an A, over 25% an F. A letter grade is only assigned with at least 20 samples over two or more years; beaches below that are marked “not yet rated” rather than guessed at.
  • Refreshed on a schedule. Refreshed as EPA BEACON and the Water Quality Portal publish new monitoring results; grades reflect multiple recent seasons.
  • Corrections welcome. Readers flag issues all the time. When the source fixes a record, BeachGrade follows.

How our content is produced

BeachGrade is produced by our editorial team. Every beach’s grade is computed from public monitoring records (EPA BEACON and the Water Quality Portal) and presented with its data sources. We describe beaches from documented measurements and cited sources rather than claiming personal visits.

Known limitations

Monitoring is seasonal and uneven — some beaches are sampled weekly, others rarely — so grades reflect what has been reported. A grade is a multi-year track record, not a current advisory: water quality changes quickly, especially after rain. Bacteria are an indicator, not a complete measure of safety (rip currents, algae, and chemical hazards are separate concerns). Always check the official state or county advisory before swimming. BeachGrade is informational and not a substitute for public-health guidance.

Independence

BeachGrade is an independent publication. We are not funded, owned, or directed by any of the agencies, companies, or organizations that appear in our data. The site is free to read and carries no display advertising — see our Privacy Policy for how data is handled — and we do not take paid placements, sponsored rankings, or “remove-my-entry” fees.

Editorial standards

We hold every page to a stated, repeatable process rather than asking readers to take our word for it. How our content is produced and the standards behind it are documented in our Editorial Policy; how we verify figures before publishing is in our Fact-Checking Policy; and how we handle mistakes is in our Corrections Policy.

History

BeachGrade launched in 2026 as part of a small portfolio of independent public-data sites. It has been maintained and updated continuously since.

Contact

Tips, corrections, data-partnership questions, and press inquiries: hello@beachgrade.org. More options on our contact page.