Public beaches: inspection for contaminants.

Existing law requires the State Department of Public Health to adopt regulations for the minimum public health standards of public beaches, including requiring the testing of waters adjacent to all public beaches for specified microbial contaminants. Existing law authorizes the department to require testing of the waters adjacent to all public beaches for additional microbial indicators if the department establishes that those indicators are as protective of the public health. This bill would authorize the department to allow a local health officer to use specified polymerase chain reaction testing methods published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency or approved as an alternative test procedure pursuant to federal law to determine the level of enterococci bacteria as a single test based on a single indicator at one or more beach locations within that jurisdiction if the local health officer demonstrates through side-by-side testing over a beach season that the use of the test method provides a reliable indication of overall microbiological contamination conditions. The bill would require the department, in making the determination of whether to authorize the use of those testing methods by a local health officer, to take into account whether the alternative indicators and related test method can provide results more quickly. The bill would specify that its provisions do not require the use of those testing methods.