The Blog

Photo of Ted Sturdevant, Director, Department of Ecology Ted Sturdevant, Director, Department of Ecology

07/05/11

With rising gas prices, families are putting more thought into their weekend plans. No one wants to drive for hours – especially with tired kids -- just to find that a favorite beach is closed for swimming or a campsite isn’t what you had in mind.

Ecology has recently launched a new online Public Beach Access feature on its Coastal Atlas website that should help. Now, anyone with access to a computer can research and plan a great trip to any of Washington’s public beaches, including those owned by the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, the Department of Natural Resources, counties and cities, or another agency.

The Coastal Atlas allows you to search for a Washington public beach by typing in an area, an address, or simply hovering a mouse over the interactive map of Washington and zooming in. It lets you see ahead of time whether the beach is closed to swimming and why.

It also gives you directions to legally access the beach, with photographs of signs, trailheads and other markers. This is especially helpful when the legal access area isn’t well marked or is located some distance from the beach.

The site contains a wealth of information about facilities at public beach access points, too: where they are and whether they have bathrooms, drinking water, picnic tables, barbeque pits, camping and close by recreational activities. It also links to weather and tide conditions and information on public boat launches, docks, marinas and more.

The Department of Health and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) partnered with Ecology in developing the Beach Access online tool. A NOAA Coastal Fellow, assigned to Ecology, did much of the field work and data collection used in developing this online tool.

The Public Beach Access tool is only one part of Ecology’s Coastal Atlas, a powerful and easy-to-use searchable database that allows users to navigate and zoom detailed maps of Washington State and then select and layer different types of information.

The Coastal Atlas is frequently used by property owners, real estate professionals, government land and resource managers, and scientists. It can be used in a number of ways. A person wishing to buy shoreline property, for example, might use the Coastal Atlas to view an aerial photograph or satellite image of the parcel and then superimpose different map layers over that particular section of shoreline.

As just one example, one might compare the stability of a slope with county or city boundaries, streams, and other information, and then view a photo taken from a plane flying over the water at low tide pointing the camera towards the shore. (Photos taken from this angle reveal bulkheads, trails and other structures that might not be seen from directly overhead.)

This fall, Ecology plans to unveil more improvements to the site that will add flood map information. We also will make photos on the site easier to find, navigate and compare across different years.

These are just a couple of examples of how state government is using technology to help those we serve – and to encourage our citizens to get out and experience the beauty of Washington’s beautiful public beaches.