Prior posts have noted the controversy over the sampling and calculation of "open" beach days; this is an issue because of the unfortunately not infrequent spills from wastewater treatment plants and runoff from stormwater.
EPA has now issued its report for the 2008 swimming season in which it claims that the number of open days has "held steady" for the third straight year. 3,740 beaches (involving 714,070 beach days) were allegedly monitored in 2008. There were a total of 5,400 notifications; 91% lasted a week or less. 60% of the notifications lasted only 1-2 days. In total, notification actions were reported for 34,296 days; so beaches were under advisory about 5% of the time.
One cannot help but to believe, as noted in the prior post on the 2007 report, that the sampling and evaluative process still leaves much to be desired in terms of completeness or accuracy.
The report and information on the report can be found at http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/beaches/. Note that some of the data from some States is still undergoing evaluation, which means the statistics are (to be kind) preliminary.