Yesterday television station WPLG ran a story about the National Resources Defense Council annual beaches water quality report, which they call "Testing the Waters 2008 Florida". (The report covers testing done in 2007.) The full NRDC report is available as a 35 page PDF file, here. Most of the report is made up of tables of beach testing data.
The Monroe County section of the report that lists how often each beach is tested and how many times it excedes standards is mostly blank (i.e., there is no testing). Of the 45 Monroe beaches listed, only 17 are tested (once per week). Of those 17, ten show less than 5% "excedence" (percent of time where tests showed excess bacteria). And only THREE showed excedence over 10%:
3. Coco Plum Beach (Marathon) - 12%
2. South Beach (Key West) - 18%
1. Higgs Beach (Key West) - 24%
Higgs Beach was ranked the worst in all of South Florida. The WPLG report calls it "the most dangerous beach in South Florida".
South and Higgs beaches, along with Smathers beach, lead the Monroe County section of the count of Beach Advisory days, with MONTHS of advisories. Only four other beaches (Simonton, Veterans, Sombrero, Pennekamp) had any advisories at all, and only of 1 or 2 weeks.
The WPLG video report (which mainly covers Miami-Dade county) is here: click
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