By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

BEACHGOERS were advised to avoid swimming at Xanadu Beach in Grand Bahama for a day or two after the popular spot failed its bi-weekly water quality test due to elevated bacteria levels.

The beach was flagged on social media by Swim Guide, a website and app that tracks real-time water quality information for thousands of beaches and other bodies of water.

The testing was done by Save The Bays/Waterkeepers Bahamas, according to outreach coordinator Rasheema Ingraham, who told The Tribune the organisation hopes to partner with the government to bolster its efforts.

"We've had failed beaches but it was probably during rainfall or change of tides," she said. "Nothing really to panic so much but to be cautious and maybe wait a few days before you use that beach again, at least 36 hours."

She said she hopes the government recognises the group's work as the samples collected are historical data.

"It's important for the tourism product, and we're hoping they will come on board to partner with us."

The organisation monitors 17 beach sites on the islands of Bimini, Grand Bahama and the western bays in New Providence, and samples are collected and processed by Waterkeepers Bahamas staff, volunteers and student cadets.

Xanadu Beach will be tested again this Thursday.

"We don't test ground water just surface water," Ms Ingraham said, "we look for things like E coli, Strep, and those strands. Bacteria is always in the water, what we look for is whether those levels are outside of the norm, so persons can be careful when they are swimming not to ingest.

"We use US EPA standards. Anywhere above our normal level we consider that too much bacteria for persons to ingest. You want to put the alert out there for persons going to those beaches to be cautious, not to say it should be completely off limits. But if you are going to swim at one of the beaches where we tested just be very careful."

She continued: "We test every two weeks but because there was a fail we will test again on Thursday. I think it's important to note that because our waters are so saline we hardly ever have failed beaches.

"We had a lot of rainfall on GB in the last few days which is something that we kind of hoped for, but we've had a continuous flow of rainfall in the last few days so of course you're going to have runoff from the land."