Factoid/2006/01/06
From Beachapedia
< Beachapedia:Factoid | 2006 | 01
EPA's BEACON Water Quality Site Showing Historical Data Has Big Flaws
- Our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a web page that shows the number of beach warnings/closures for any given year for individual beaches. However, the EPA has chosen a method of reporting that is (purposely?) misleading and will frequently give people the impression that any given beach had far, far fewer warnings/closures than actually occurred. For example, Poche Beach in San Clemente, CA was listed by the EPA as having only 1 warning/closure for all of 2005. However, that 1 warning/closure lasted 50 successive days, which should really count as 50 warnings/closures. In 2004, Poche Beach had 130 successive days of beach warnings/closures and the EPA counted that as a single warning/closure! You can click down deeper in the EPA's BEACON site to see the actual number of days of each warning/closure, but that doesn't make up for how misleading the EPA's reporting system is. To see the EPA's Poche Beach example, go to http://oaspub.epa.gov/beacon/beacon_historical_data.main?p_beach_id=17195&p_county_fips=059&p_state_fips=06
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