Back in November, Auckland Council launched an upgraded Safeswim website giving you a great new tool to help understand water quality at your local beaches. It provides up-to-date information on beach conditions so you can make safe choices on where to swim.
WATCH: Find out how water quality is monitored.
This animation, produced by DHI Water and Environment, is from a typical rain event on 12 May 2017, an event we see often in Auckland. The animation shows the predicted changes in bacteria concentration in the water arising from the rain event.
It shows how the contamination persists and moves around the harbour as the tide moves in and out. The animation demonstrates how hourly rainfall changes the contamination in the harbour.
The colour key at the side of the graph simply shows anything that is green, yellow, orange or red is in excess of the guidelines.
Where does the information come from?
Information is gathered from several sources, including real-time weather data from MetService, Auckland Council’s monitoring stations and information on the performance of Watercare’s waste water network.
This information is combined to identify the location and amount of contaminated water that reaches our beaches. We can then use information on tides and winds to predict the movement of the contaminated water around our beaches.
Check before you swim
The website has been incredibly popular with 37,000 views in the first month.
To understand more about Auckland beaches check out the Safeswim website.
