DRNA’s weekly beach notice, published September 16, names one beach as not suitable for swimming. Pico de Piedra in Aguada has now been named in 8 of the 60 notices on file, more than any other beach on this week’s list.
This week’s DRNA notice, published September 16 from samples taken September 14, names just one beach as not suitable for swimming: Pico de Piedra in Aguada. That beach has now shown up in 8 of the 60 notices on file, more than any other beach flagged this week. Five beaches named last time have dropped off this week’s list, but that’s mostly because they haven’t been sampled recently, not because conditions improved.
The bigger story is how little of the coast is actually being checked. Of the 49 monitoring stations DRNA tracks, none have a sample from within the last 21 days, leaving 48 stations without recent data. Zooming out over the full season, Tropical Beach in Naguabo has been named most often, in 25 of the 60 notices, a reminder that this week’s single flag is only a narrow slice of a much patchier record.
Not suitable for swimming this week
| Beach | Town | Enterococcus | Sampled | Times flagged this season |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pico de Piedra | Aguada | 209 | August 24 | 8 of 60 |
Off the list since the last notice
| Beach | Town | Now | Sampled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balneario Manuel Nolo Morales; Sardinera | Dorado | Not sampled recently | August 25 |
| Playa Sixto Escobar | San Juan | Not sampled recently | August 25 |
| Tropical Beach | Naguabo | Not sampled recently | August 24 |
| Playa Guayanés | Yabucoa | Not sampled recently | August 24 |
| Playa Cabullón | Ponce | Not sampled recently | August 25 |
Coming off the list is not a certificate: it means this week’s notice does not name the beach, from samples taken September 14.
What this notice does and does not say
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 3rd Beach Watch (the previous one is here).
Source: DRNA “Notificación Monitoria de Playas”, posted September 16; samples taken September 14. 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.