Swimming Banned At Beachwood Beach For 2025, Maybe Longer: Report

BEACHWOOD, NJ — Swimming has been banned at Beachwood's beach on the Toms River for 2025 due to ongoing concerns about high bacteria counts, according to a report.

Further, the swimming ban may never be lifted, the Asbury Park Press reported.

The borough's beach was closed to swimming in July 2024 following four straight weeks of closures due to high levels of fecal bacteria.

Those ongoing concerns led to the closure, the report said.

Borough administrator Susan Minock referred a Patch reporter to Beachwood Mayor William J. Cairns on Tuesday. Messages left for Cairns were not immediately answered.

Water quality issues have led to dozens of swimming closures at the beach over the years and in 2020, the beach was declared the dirtiest in New Jersey.

The organization Environmental New Jersey named it the dirtiest beach after analyzing data of fecal bacteria from beaches in 29 states and Puerto Rico. The study indicated that 386 — or about one-eighth — of the beaches surveyed were potentially unsafe on at least 25 percent of the days when sampling occurred.

In July 2024, water samples from the beach far exceeded the maximum allowable level of Enterococci bacteria on multiple occasions. The standard is 104 colonies per 100 milliliters of sampled water; levels of 400 were recorded several times, and a high of 1,160 was recorded just days before swimming was banned for the rest of the summer.

"For the safety, health and welfare of the residents and others, the Mayor and Council have decided to close swimming at the beach for the remainder of the 2024 season due to the Ocean County Health Department reporting of excessive bacteria levels found in the water," the borough said at the time.

The beach also was closed to swimming in 2023, but that was due to the inability to find lifeguards, the borough said at the time.