What is a Beach Act beach?

The Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act of 2000, usually called the BEACH Act, amended the Clean Water Act. It lets EPA award grants to coastal and Great Lakes states, territories and eligible tribes to monitor recreational beaches for bacteria and notify the public when levels are too high.

What the flag means

In the EPA BEACON attributes, each beach has a field that reads Y or N. Y means the jurisdiction lists that beach in its BEACH Act program. Those beaches are the ones the program expects to monitor and report on.

N does not mean a beach is unsafe or unmonitored. A local health department or park agency may still sample it outside the federal program.

What the flag does not tell you

• It is not a water quality rating.
• It does not mean an advisory or closure is in effect.
• It does not say how recently the beach was sampled.

For today's beach advisories and closures, use the notification site of your state or local beach program. See also epa beach monitoring tiers.