New app from Heal the Bay will provide daily updates on water quality in Long Beach

Plaing beach days may be a little easier thanks to a new water quality prediction tool that forecasts bacteria levels at a handful of California beaches — and Long Beach is one of them.

Heal the Bay, known for its aual Beach Report Card, offers daily “nowcasts” based on various environmental conditions, such as rainfall, waves, tides and past bacteria concentrations. The information is available via a free mobile app or through Heal the Bay’s website.

Created in collaboration with Stanford University, UCLA and Heal the Bay, spokesman Matthew King said the “nowcast” system makes predictions during the summer months (April 1 to Oct. 31) at five beaches: Belmont Pier in Long Beach; Doheny State Beach in Orange County; Santa Monica Pier; and Arroyo Burro (Hendry’s) and East Beach in Santa Barbara County.

These beaches were targeted for a pilot program rollout that began last summer with three beaches that are historically troubled spots; the program expanded this summer to include East Beach and Belmont Pier.

Ryan Searcy, who creates the models and runs the forecasts each day, said that over the next three years, some 15 to 25 beaches from San Francisco to San Diego will be added to the program, which is intended to keep swimmers, surfers and beachgoers safe.

On a regular basis, Heal the Bay assigns A-F letter grades to over 400 beaches throughout California, according to levels of harmful bacteria found in the water. The better the grade a beach receives, the lower the risk of illness from intestinal bugs, skin rashes, and ear and upper respiratory infections. The report is not designed to measure trash or toxin amounts at beaches.

“Most beaches only sample their beach water once every seven days so we really only have a sample data for one day out of the week and the rest of the days are kind of left hanging to wonder, ‘OK, where is the water quality now?’ Searcy said. “Based on statistics and years of data, we are now making a more educated guess than just relying on a sample that was taken, say, on Monday.”

Long Beach, for instance, tests its water once a week, but the turnaround time for those results is between 24 to 48 hours, according to Nelson Kerr, director of the city’s environmental health bureau.

Bacteria levels that exceed what is considered safe usually clears up the next day. “So by the time we get the results, the water is already clean,” he said.

The new tool should help shorten the public notification gap, Kerr said.

Aside from a massive 2.4 million-gallon sewage spill near downtown Los Angeles that flowed into the Los Angeles River and into the bay, closing all coastal beaches for several days, water quality conditions this summer have been great, Kerr said. This year, city beaches earned nearly all A grades during dry conditions, however, they received failing grades during wet conditions because of polluted runoff from local rivers that feed into the Pacific Ocean.

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