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It’s been more than a year since the debacle last summer when it took the state about a month to make public news that E. coli levels were dangerously high at Lake of the Ozarks. As KSMU’s Missy Shelton reports, there’s now a website you can check to find out which state waterways are safe for swimming and which ones are not.
State Park Beach Status Website
Before you head to a state park beach this summer, make a trip to your computer first. There’s now an online resource where you can see which areas are safe for swimming and which ones are not. What some dubbed E. coli-gate last year has resulted in changes in the way the state notifies the public about the presence of dangerous amounts of bacteria in bodies of water. Mark Templeton is the Director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
Templeton says, “We have clear procedures in place so that after we do the testing, we get the results and we get that information out to the public as quickly as we possibly can. We have a new website that people can go to or through our state parks website that has an interactive map with the latest results, color-coded so you can know where we got results that indicate that there are not bacteria issues and red points where it shows that there are issues people should take into consideration.”
Templeton says, in most cases, results are posted on the website within half a day.We have a link to this new website on the status of state park beaches on our website: KSMU.org.
