This year the country has 68 Zero Pollution beaches
On the day that the bathing season opens in various areas of the country, the association revealed that the Zero Pollution beaches, which it evaluated, represent 11% of the total of 621 bathing areas in operation.
In total, this year there are 24 more beaches on the list, compared to 44 classified last year.
The municipalities with the largest number of Zero Pollution beaches are Torres Vedras (Lisbon district), which repeats the previous year’s good ranking with 10 spaces, Peniche (Leiria), with five, Angra do Heroísmo (Azores), also with five, and Tavira (Faro district) and Praia da Vitória (Azores), with four beaches each.
The association said, however, that this year, contrary to what had been recorded in all previous years since 2016 (the year in which Zero started this assessment), there is no indoor bathing area with this classification.
A Zero Pollution beach is one where no microbiological contamination was detected in the analyzes carried out on the bathing water over the last three bathing seasons.
This analysis took into account the parameters of the legislation in force, and it was found that all 68 bathing areas are coastal.
Bathing water monitoring is a legal competence of APA on the continent, the Regional Directorate for Sea Affairs in the Azores and the Regional Directorate for Spatial Planning and Environment in Madeira.
