MDEQ discusses factors and safety on water contact advisories

HARRISON COUNTY, Miss. (WXXV)- Officials continue to warn Mississippi beach-goers to check water quality before heading out as active water contact advisories continue along beaches in western Harrison County.

As of Tuesday, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality says bacteria levels at six locations along the Coast are higher than what is safe for contact. MDEQ Coastal Monitoring Coordinator Wyatt Dunaway said, “What an advisory means is we have high bacteria levels in two consecutive samples, back-to-back.”

Dunaway says water samples of active advisories are taken every single day until improving. “As long as a station was under advisory, we test it every day, and then we publish the results when we get them in from our third-party lab.”

You can find those results on their website at beaches.mdeq.ms.gov. “Here we test for Enterococci bacteria, and that bacteria lives in the gut of human beings and in intestines. We test that bacteria at all beaches. Also, just want to make the distinction that, you’ll hear about flesh eating bacteria, we cannot test for that. It happens more during the summer time due to increased water temperatures and things like that.”

Until bacteria levels return to a safer range, officials say it is best to stay out of the water and to keep checking for updates.