It's rare that it ever gets hot enough (or we ever feel brave enough) to jump into the ocean in San Francisco, but should you ever decide to go swimming here, you might want to look at the Natural Resources Defense Council's report "Testing the Water 2014," which ranks the nation's beach water quality based on testing done in 2013 for bacteria in the water. According to NRDC, several Bay Area beaches exceeded the rate of BAV (Beach Action Value, or the water safety standard), including Aquatic Park and Lakeshore Park in San Mateo County and the Windsurfer Circle in Candlestick Point in San Francisco. In SF, the water test broke the beaches down by specific location, because the same beach could have drastically different water quality in various areas. For example, most of Ocean Beach tested really well (with 0-4% BAV), except for the part at Vicente St., which had a whopping 75% BAV.
Here's a list of the most polluted San Francisco beaches (name of beach/part of beach, % of samples with high BAV):
Ocean Beach at Vicente St., 75%
Candlestick Point, Windsurfer Circle, 47%
Baker Beach, Lobos Creek at Lower Parking Lot, 28%
Candlestick Point, Sunnydale Cove, 22%
Aquatic Park, Mid-Beach, 19%
Crissy Field, New Beach, 17%
See the entire results for San Francisco and the rest of California here.
[Via: SFGate; photo by Sarah Han]
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