DRNA’s weekly beach notice, published August 31, names four beaches as not suitable for swimming. Muelle de Arecibo in Arecibo has now been named in 18 of the 60 notices on file, more than any other beach on this week’s list.
This week’s notice swings sharply from the all-clear posted on August 19: DRNA now lists four beaches, all newly flagged, as not suitable for swimming, spread across four municipios — Punta Salinas in Toa Baja, Punta Guilarte in Arroyo and Pico de Piedra in Aguada among them. Results are only published days after the water was actually sampled, so anyone checking this is looking at a snapshot from a few days back, not current conditions. Muelle de Arecibo also returns, and it’s a familiar name — it has now shown up in 18 of the 60 notices on file, more than any other beach this week, even though the last number recorded there was actually below the action threshold DRNA uses.
Zooming out, coverage of the island’s coast remains partial: of the 49 monitoring stations tracked, 30 have a sample within the last 21 days, meaning a sizable share are not sampled recently. Over the full stretch of notices going back to March 4, Tropical Beach in Naguabo tops the list of beaches most often flagged, a reminder that some spots recur far more than others rather than this being a one-off bad week. With no beaches clearing and none staying flagged from last time (since last week was clear), this notice reads as new trouble rather than a lingering problem, but the gaps in monitoring mean plenty of coastline simply isn’t being watched closely enough to say either way.
Not suitable for swimming this week
| Beach | Town | Enterococcus | Sampled | Times flagged this season |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balneario Punta Salinas | Toa Baja | 75 | August 25 | 16 of 60 |
| Balneario Punta Guilarte | Arroyo | 109 | August 24 | 7 of 60 |
| Balneario Pico de Piedra | Aguada | 209 | August 24 | 6 of 60 |
| Muelle de Arecibo | Arecibo | 9 | August 25 | 18 of 60 |
DRNA lists Muelle de Arecibo (last published number 9) even though that is below the 70-colony action value; DRNA re-samples, and its notice stands.
What this notice does and does not say
DRNA publishes the notice days after the water is sampled — this one covers samples taken August 24 and 25, posted August 31, and a heavy shower can push a beach over the 70-colony action value hours after a clean sample was taken. A beach that is not named was either within limits or was not sampled, and the two are not the same thing: 15 of the 49 monitoring stations carry no sample from the last 21 days.
Volunteer labs test some beaches DRNA does not, and their results are published separately: they are not part of this notice and cannot put a beach under advisory.
Every monitoring station, with its own number and its own date, is on the beach water quality page; DRNA’s notice itself is here (and as a PDF, which is a scan).
This is the first Beach Watch.
Source: DRNA “Notificación Monitoria de Playas”, posted August 31; samples taken August 24 and 25. Numbers from CARICOOS’s monitoring feed. The Beach Action Value is 70 colonies of Enterococcus per 100 mL; DRNA’s notice is the only thing that puts a beach under a swimming advisory, and it is superseded by the next one.