Charleston Harbor 3 (Battery Beach)

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Battery Beach is the City of Charleston's only sand beach and is located near the corner of East Bay Street and Water Street. The waters just off Battery Beach are used by the Carolina Yacht Club for sailing instruction and man overboard drills.

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COVID-19

Keep your distance from other people.

Practicing social distancing is essential right now. Follow the advice of the health experts. If your community has asked that you remain indoors and away from others, do so. Heading to the beach should only be considered an option if social distancing practices can be followed. Spending a day in any crowded place is the worst thing we can do for our most vulnerable right now and will counter the efforts to curb the virus’ spread.

For more information, please visit the World Health Organization public resource on COVID-19.

Water Quality

Meets water quality standards
Current Status
This status is based on the latest sample, taken on August 5th, 2020. Charleston Waterkeeper updates the status of this beach as soon as test results become available. These results were posted to Swim Guide on August 6th, 2020 at 4:49 PM.

For water quality icon legend, click:

Current Weather

18°C

Cloudy

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Monitoring Frequency

Source Information

Charleston Waterkeeper’s Recreational Water Quality Monitoring Program regularly tests the “swimmability” of several local tidal creeks and hotspots for activities like swimming, SUPing, kayaking, and sailing. Every Wednesday from May through October samples are collected and analyzed for the amount of Enterococcus bacteria present. Testing results are posted to Swim Guide every Thursday afternoon or as soon as they are available.

The State of South Carolina’s water quality standard for water-based recreational activity is 104 MPN/100 mL. Swimming and other full body contact recreational activity is not recommended in areas where the most recent testing shows Enterococcus bacteria counts of 104 MPN/100 mL or higher.

Sample site locations are color coded in Swim Guide as follows:

A “Green” site = test result of 103 MPN/100 mL or lower.
A “Red” site = test result of 104 MPN/100 mL or higher.
A “Gray” site = no test result

Water Quality Graph