Despite it being the rainiest summer in seven decades, Boston Harbor-area beaches had “among the safest” water quality for beachgoers in 2023 and South Boston’s shoreline can claim to host “the cleanest urban beaches in the country,” an advocacy group said Monday.
The overall water quality rating for Boston Harbor-region beaches was 86 percent in 2023, according to Save the Harbor/Save the Bay’s annual Metropolitan Beaches Water Quality Report Card. The 2023 score is down from 93 percent in 2022 and below the 90 percent average of the last six years.
Pleasure Bay, City Point Beach and M Street Beach — all in South Boston — earned water quality safety ratings of 100 percent for the 2023 season, the only beaches to hit that mark. Only three beaches scored below 80 percent — Malibu Beach in Dorchester at 76 percent, Tenean Beach in Dorchester at 73 percent and King’s Beach in Lynn at 55 percent.
“What we want people to take from this report card is the confidence to go out and use your beach,” Save the Harbor/Save the Bay Executive Director Chris Mancini said Monday at a Revere Beach press conference. That beach earned a water quality safety rating of 89 percent last year, down from 98 percent in 2022 and below its 94 percent six-year average.
The group’s report card covers the Metropolitan Region’s public beaches in Lynn, Nahant, Revere, Winthrop, East Boston, South Boston, Dorchester, Quincy and Hull owned by the state and managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
DCR Commissioner Brian Arrigo, the former mayor of Revere, said Monday that Massachusetts and Greater Boston “continue to have some of the cleanest beaches all throughout the country and we are certainly proud of the progress that we’ve made.” Those resources, he said, will benefit residents as Massachusetts deals with a changing climate.
“With our summers getting hotter and hotter, it is more important now, more than ever, that our families…