WILLIAM COLGIN/SUN HERALDA family watches a great blue heron pass in Ocean Springs. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council ranks Coast beaches 19th out of 30 in water quality.

WILLIAM COLGIN SUN HERALD Buy Photo

Alabama beaches in Gulf Shores and at the Gulf State Park Pavilion have been ranked top in the country by the Natural Resources Defense Council's annual report "Testing the Waters."

Mississippi beaches ranked 19th in water quality, out of 30 states reporting.

But according to the report, testing in 2012 at sites in Jackson County met the standard for bacteria in the water more often than Harrison and Hancock counties.

Mississippi has 22 beach sites that are tested weekly.

And these sites had more bacteria than is acceptable for public health 8 percent of the time they were tested. California, which ranked 20th in the report, had 504 test sites that also missed the mark 8 percent of the time.

The report uses water-quality tests each state performs. In Mississippi, the Department of Environmental Quality handles the monitoring.

These tests are required by the EPA, and the NRDC gets its data from the states or the EPA. The NRDC has been gathering the information for 23 years.

The 2013 report presents information on water quality and beach closings and swimming advisories at more than 3,000 U.S. beach sites along the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes.

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Mississippi's beaches ranked 19th of 30 in US in water quality