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Summer bathing season opens
• 07 Jun 2007 •
 THIS YEAR’S summer bathing season officially began on June 1 with a ceremony at Santo André beach in Santiago do Cacém promoted by the national lifeguard institute (ISN) and with a presentation of the ‘Beach For All’ project at Carcavelos.
According to the Water Institute, this year Portugal has submitted to the EU 508 bathing sites, 422 in coastal areas and 86 in freshwater areas. After the award of the Blue Flag quality symbol to 189 Portuguese beaches by the European Foundation for Environmental Education, last week it was the turn of environmental group Quercus to grant the annual Golden Quality award to 196 beaches.
Quercus have been checking several quality criteria since 1993, including the periodical analysis of the quality of the water, and have now decided to reveal to the public the beaches where, at least in the last five years, the quality of the water has always been regarded as good.
Albufeira municipality, with 15, is the one with the most Golden Award beaches.
At Santo André the hoisting of the flag indicating the beach has a lifeguard presence, was followed by a display by lifeguards from the ISN.
At Carcavelos, the Beach for All project was launched. This is a government-founded initiative set up to help handicapped beach-goers, and will have specially adapted beach chairs to allow them to bathe in the sea.
The ISN also presented the statistics report for last year’s bathing season. According to the report, during 2006, a total of 21 people died at Portuguese beaches. Between June 1 and September 30, eight people drowned in the sea off beaches which had lifeguards on duty and 13 died in unguarded waters. During the same period of time, 764 people were rescued by lifeguards.
With the objective of increasing security, this year the ISN has placed 1,200 lifeguards at bathing sites covering 250km of coastline. However, there are still 350km of Portuguese beaches that don’t have lifeguards on duty or any sort of rescue services for visitors.
The European Union also presented its annual bathing water report which provides useful water quality information for the millions of people who visit Europe's beaches every summer. According to the report, in Portugal coastal bathing areas compliance with mandatory EU values remains at 97.6 per cent. |  Return to Top
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