This site serves as the public outreach component of the State of Utah Division of Water Quality's collaborative E. coli monitoring of highly recreated lakes and reservoirs, as well as rivers and streams. The information on this Web site is maintained by a multi-agency committee on E. coli, and is intended to be accessible for up-to-date advisory information about E. coli levels in State surface waters. See the map below of most of the locations sampled in 2011 for E. coli. A map of 2012 locations is coming soon!
Current Sampling 2012 Recreation Season sampling has just begun! Salem Pond Update 2010 sampling identified re-occuring E. coli exceedences at Knoll Beach at Salem Pond in Salem UT. Additional sampling to help address the issue is underway. Archived Press Releases Salem Pond Press Release, June 10, 2010
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Frequently Asked Questions
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What is my risk if there is an advisory? While E. coli is an indicator of fecal contamination and may not be a direct cause of illness, the threshold of 409 most-probable number of density counts per 100mL of water sample (MPN) adopted to issue a swimming advisory relates to a risk factor of 8 illnesses per 1,000 swimmers. As the value of the MPN increases above 409 MPN, the risk of illness if exposed to contaminated waters also increases. In order to ensure waters are safe for swimming once an advisory has been issued, samples are collected every day for at least five days. To remove the advisories each water sample collected must be under the 409 MPN threshold and the long term average value of all the samples must be below 126 MPN. This lower value is more protective of long term exposure. These values have been adopted from the US EPA (http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/ |
| Most 2011 sampling sites are displayed in the map below. For a complete list of collected data, visit the Sampling Data link above. |
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Revised: August 8, 2012