Beachgoers at Residents Beach on Marco Island have the all-clear to return to the water.
The Florida Department of Health in Collier County said in an email to members of its mailing list late Friday that water-quality tests found levels of the feces-indicating bacteria had fallen below the threshold to continue a public health advisory issued Tuesday for Residents Beach.
“The water quality at Residents Beach on Marco Island shows an acceptable level of enterococcus bacteria established by state guidelines,” the Collier County health department wrote in the press release. The agency “is lifting the advisory for high bacterial levels.”
The health advisory for Residents Beach was issued after water-quality tests found high levels of enterococcus, a bacteria that lives in the guts of mammals and leave the body in excrement. Advisories are issued to indicate contact with the water may pose an increased risk of infectious diseases, especially among those with related existing conditions.
To discover how much enterococcus remains in the water at Residents Beach means following several website links, one of which is to the Florida Healthy Beaches program’s water-quality sampling data, which said: “Fecal indicator bacteria are monitored routinely. The results and any advisories are posted on the individual county pages.”
The most recent health alert information posted on Collier County health department’s website on Saturday evening was from June 8, 2026, concerning blue-green algae in Lake Avalon.
How high the enterococcus levels were at Residents Beach is unknown.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The health department says those test results can be found by following a website link in its original advisory, but that link leads to other links that leads to a dead end.
Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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