Windward Beach Gets One of the State's Poorest Water Quality Rankings

The water quality at Brick Township's Windward Beach got one of the poorest rankings statewide, a report out this week shows.

Windward Beach was the ninth-worst beach in the state out of 288 beaches that were monitored for bacteria levels and given a Beach Action Value score by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The Beach Action Value figure is an aggregate of collection samples taken. A beach exceeds the acceptable BAV when 60 enterococcus bacteria colony forming units per 100 ml marine or estuarine water is detected in a single sample.

In the case of Windward, the beach had 24 samples taken during the 2013 season and exceeded the acceptable BAV score in 17 percent of cases.

But there was also good news in Brick: Brick Beach III scored perfectly in 2013, with zero samples of the 18 taken exceeding BAV. Likewise, none of the 11 samples taken at 7th Avenue in the township's Normandy Beach section exceeded the BAV last year.

Overall, New Jersey's waters were considered the third cleanest in the United States.

In 2013, New Jersey reported 492 coastal beaches and beach segments, 288 of which were monitored. Of all reported beach monitoring samples, 3 percent exceeded the BAV in a single sample.