Health & Safety
Water quality is important to recreational lake use but is not the only factor that can affect swimmers and boaters. Learn more information on wildlife, toxic substances, amoebae, bacteria and other factors that can impact your enjoyment of our lakes and waterways.
- Access tips about lake-related health and safety issues
- Access the FDEP Ecosummary for Lake Virginia
- Access the Lake Recreation Health & Safety page
Beach Monitoring
In addition, six stations at two parks (Dinky Dock on Lake Virginia, and Lake Baldwin Park on Lake Baldwin) are monitored bi-weekly for bacterial contamination. Additional temporary stations, or parameters, are added as needed to facilitate specific studies, or to determine the cause of unusual conditions that may be observed.
Dinky Dock
This area is sampled bi-weekly for bacterial contamination. The beach is posted with no swimming warning signs when bacteria counts exceed State of Florida guidelines for swimming areas.
Lake Baldwin Park
The area is monitored at the same frequency as Dinky Dock, and is usually within State standards for bacterial contamination. The presence of dogs in the beach area, however, creates an elevated risk for other parasites that cannot be tested for, and for which there are not accepted recreational beach standards in place. Because the beach is a designated no swimming area, additional sample based posting is not performed.
This area is permanently CLOSED to people for the purpose of swimming.
Water Quality Monitoring Program
The city monitors 22 permanent ambient water quality stations on 21 lakes and the outfall canal. These stations are monitored monthly for a wide range of water quality parameters including: Total Nitrogen, Total Phosphorous, pH, Dissolved Oxygen, Chlorophyll a, Turbidity, Alkalinity, Color and Clarity.
Data collected since 1998 is stored in an electronic database. This format allows easy access to any combination of stored information and facilitates rapid analysis of conditions and trends in the lakes’ water quality. Information from the city’s monitoring program is included on Orange County’s water atlas website at orange.wateratlas.usf.edu
For information and water clarity trends on an individual lake, click on the lake name below:
Contact Information
Don Marcotte
Flooding & Infrastructure
Public Works Assistant Director/
City Engineer