The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is looking to continue their new predictive beach water testing program, and are hoping more municipalities will take part.
The Health Unit launched the program in 2025, which coincides with the weekly beach water testing. Four of the eight local beaches took part in launch, including Lakeshore Lakeview Park West, Point Pelee North West, Colchester, and Holiday Beach.
The Health Unit provided staff from the participating municipalities with training and the required equipment to take daily water samples which generated a risk level (low, moderate, or high).
Staff taking part in the model expressed satisfaction with the training, instructional materials, and resources provided by the WECHU, however, did express concerns with some operational challenges, such as difficultly in collecting water samples due to beach conditions, limited staffing capacity, and occasional missed submissions.
The validity of the daily E. coli risk levels were assessed in the predictive model. A total of 55 assessments were conducted, with 93 per cent of the predicted values demonstrating moderate or optimal validity.
Jenny Tan, Environmental Health Manager at WECHU, says the validation from the predictive model were very accurate.
"So it can help provide that daily result or predictive result to the public, so with that in place, hoping the public will be able to use that information and make an informed decision on whether or not they should go to the beach."
She says staff within the municipalities taking part collect samples and submit a survey to WECHU.
"Those numbers that are provided through the online survey get sent to our epidemiology team, and they use that number... they plug it into the model and then it outputs a predictive value as you see the low, moderate, or high risk."
Tan says more municipalities taking part will assist with the program.
"There's always going to be refinements to the model, so with more municipalities and stakeholders involved, that will help with that refinement of that model. So the more data points that we have the more we can refine that model."
The predicted results were published on WECHU's website and was updated on the beach hotline.
The weekly water samples will always take precedence over the predictive model. If the weekly sample indicated the beach is closed, the beach will remain closed all week.
Beach water testing will begin in May.