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Beach Water Quality Monitoring Program

You may be surprised to learn that Tomales Bay is an impaired water body, from pollution that generally comes from agriculture, septic systems, and road runoff, causing our watersheds at times to be unsafe for recreation and shellfish consumption. Every year, the County of Marin samples the Tomales Bay watershed April through October as part of a Beach and Ocean Monitoring Program, to check for high levels of harmful pathogens that may cause people to get sick. The results of these samples are published in the annual Beach Report Card by our friends at Heal the Bay, and we started sharing this data through our social media to advise the public when water contact in some of our favorite beaches should be avoided. In 2020, we restarted the sampling program at Drakes Estero and Drakes Beach—in partnership with the County of Marin and the Point Reyes National Seashore—to ensure recreational water quality samples are being collected to create a long-term dataset so we can advocate to ensure healthy and clean watersheds.

 

Sampling Schedules

Water Quality Results

  • County of Marin posts the weekly sampling results to their website. We have embedded the County’s data for quick reference of the weekly results below.

  • Heal the Bay Beach report cards: Beach Report Card Year 2022-2023

County of Marin Environmental Health Services embedded data link of weekly water quality results in Marin County. Information may be accessed directly at www.marincounty.org/depts/cd/divisions/environmental-health-services/beach-monitoring


Interested in our Advocacy?

To protect water quality, it’s critical to have long-term data sets to understand where and when pollution may be impacting beneficial uses. In 2017, we were surprised to learn that the water quality sampling at public beaches within the Point Reyes National Seashore stopped in 2013. At that time, the Seashore was undertaking the controversial plan to updated their General Management Plan in a public process that to considered whether beef and dairy ranching operations could continue to operate on public lands. For EAC, the lack of recent water quality data to inform the plan was concerning. At a minimum, recreational water body sampling should be happening.

As a local grassroots nonprofit, we were able to organize a partnership between the County of Marin Environmental Health Services and the Point Reyes National Seashore to restart the sampling program. In the first two years of the program, EAC provided the funding, staff, and volunteers to collect weekly water samples at Drakes Beach and Drakes Estero. In 2024, the Point Reyes National Seashore financially supports the lab fees and EAC continues to help with collection of samples throughout the year with our staff and volunteers.

At the same time, EAC effectively advocated to the California Coastal Commission to include to require a comprehensive water quality sampling program and annual report as a requirement of the Commission’s approval of the General Management Plan Amendment in 2020. This helps to ensure long-term monitoring data at multiple sites throughout the Seashore are being sampled year-round that will inform beef and dairy ranch operational management strategies.

Read the below blog articles dedicated to the Point Reyes National Seashore’s General Management Plan Amendment and its implementation to ensure water quality protections of California’s coastal resources and water quality:

Donations to our nonprofit help support programs like our recreational water quality program.
Costs for this program include mileage and personnel costs for staffing to collect samples.
Samples are collected by trained team members.
In 2022, program costs = $1,500.00