The latest State of the Beaches report has revealed 94 per cent of monitored ocean beaches and 80 per cent of all monitored swimming spots are graded as good or very good.
The annual report provides an overview of water quality at 214 swimming locations across the State, which are monitored under the NSW Government\u2019s Beachwatch and Beachwatch Partnership programs.
Minister for Environment James Griffin said State of the Beaches has five categories of water quality rating: very good, good, fair, poor or very poor.
\u201cDespite the wettest summer in a decade, and Sydney\u2019s wettest year on record, there\u2019s been only a slight decline on last year\u2019s results,\u201d Mr Griffin said.
\u201cIn 2021\u201322, 172 (80 per cent) of the 214 swimming sites in NSW were graded as good or very good, indicating they were suitable for swimming most of the time.
\u201cWith more than 85 per cent of people in NSW living within 50 kilometres of the coast, heading to a local swimming spot is a way of life for many of us.
\u201cWe\u2019ve been running the Beachwatch monitoring program since 1989, and we know how important it is for providing confidence to the people of NSW, which is why we announced in the NSW Budget that we\u2019re expanding the Beachwatch Partnership program with $18.5 million over 10 years.\u201d
Rainfall is the major driver of pollution in recreational waters, as it generates storm water runoff and triggers discharges from wastewater treatment systems.
Many estuarine, lake and lagoon swimming sites did not perform as well as ocean beaches as they are more susceptible to wet weather impacts.
State of the Beaches 2021-22 found:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The latest State of the Beaches report has revealed 94 per cent of monitored ocean beaches and 80 per cent of all monitored swimming spots are graded as good or very good. The annual report provides an overview of water quality at 214 swimming locations across the State, which are monitored under the NSW Government\u2019s Beachwatch … Continue reading “Latest water quality report released for NSW swimming spots”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18673,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18672\/revisions\/18673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Beachwatch program works by routinely collecting water from swimming sites and testing for bacteria as an indicator of contamination.
Beachwatch also issues daily early morning forecasts for the predicted water quality at 160 swim site in Sydney, Hunter, Central Coast and Illawarra regions.
The 2021-22 State of the Beaches report can be viewed at: https:\/\/www.environment.nsw.gov.au\/topics\/water\/beaches\/reporting-beach-water-quality\/state-of-the-beaches<\/a>
Daily Beachwatch pollution forecasts and weekly star ratings for beaches across NSW can be found at www.environment.nsw.gov.au\/beachwatch<\/a> and on Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"