A few days after storms rocked Monterey County, causing flooding, power outages and road closures affecting thousands of residents, it finally feels like a beach day.
But all of Monterey County's beaches remain closed due to storm runoff, according to the Monterey County Health Department.
"The public is advised not to have ocean water contact at this time," according to the Health Department's advisory, which has been in effect since Tuesday.
County health officials regularly test ocean water off popular beaches, including Carmel Beach, Lovers Point, Asilomar and Del Monte Beach for fecal coliform and the bacteria Enterococcus.
Because water coming out of storm drains is more likely to contain bacteria, viruses and and chemicals, officials are encouraging people to stay out of the water until test results confirm lowered concentrations of the nasty stuff they test for.
For the most up-to-date information on beach closures, visit the Monterey County Health Department's website at www.mtyhd.org/beach or call the beach information hotline at (800) 347-6363.
(2) comments
Thanks for the info. My buddies and I cancelled our scuba dives this weekend. The link you provide does not look like it has been updated in months. That's not very useful. It might lead people to think there isn't a current problem!
Mitch, the underlying data tables seem to be updated regularly (most recently 3/3/2017 -- just 3 days ago). However, the web pages which contain the tables are not themselves updated (thus showing a much older date in the page header).
The Health Department should really fix that, because unless you take time to look at the table, yes -- it all seems very out of date!
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