Beaches close in Palm Beach County: Why are warnings late and where's this bacteria coming from?

[TheRealNorth]

1. Limits to environmental water testing

I did beach water testing for a public health department when I first got out of college, and the most reliable tests available was (and I believe still is) based on culturing (growing) microbes from a water sample. It takes about 18-24 hours to culture a sample, so once you include the time it takes to collect and deliver the sample to the lab, it's the next day when you have the results.

You also have to consider that they may not collect water samples every day (where I was, it was 2-3 times a week)

They have been looking at quantitative PCR methods that could be done faster (4-5 hours) for the past 15 years,, but to my knowledge, the methods that have been published so far have not proven to be as reliable.