Three Rivers Park Beaches

click here to exit to the Three Rivers Park District Beach Monitoring Program
(formerly Hennepin Parks)

Three Rivers Park District maintains 10 swimming beach facilities for park guests. Three of the swimming facilities, French Regional Park, Lake Rebecca Park Reserve, and Cleary Lake Regional Park, have beach curtains around them to control nuisance populations of these aquatic organisms. The main problem at most swimming beaches is the large goose populations which have developed over the last few years. Three Rivers Park District staff undertake a number of measures to reduce goose populations including:

Fence swimming beaches to exclude geese
Relocate adults and young out of state during the molting season
Prohibit feeding of geese on swimming beaches
Herding geese off of beaches with trained border collies
Pick goose dropping off of beaches daily

Monitoring Frequency

Fecal coliform bacteria levels are monitored at Three Rivers Park District swimming beaches weekly during the summer to evaluate the safety of the beaches from a public health perspective.

Beach Advisory / Closure Criteria

Although coliform bacteria themselves are not usually harmful, these bacteria can be associated with other disease causing bacteria or parasites. Obviously, the more coliform bacteria there are in the water, the greater the possibility that some harmful organisms are also present. Therefore, in order to maintain healthy swimming beaches, the State of Minnesota established the following recommendations:

The average of five swimming beach samples in a 30-day period should not exceed a count of more than 200 bacteria cells per 100 mL of water.
No one sample should have a fecal coliform count greater than 1,000 bacteria colonies per 100 mL of water.If a sample exceeds 1,000 bacteria colonies per 100 mL, consideration should be given to closing the swimming beach.

In order to ensure a safe swimming experience for park guests, Three Rivers Park District has adopted standards more restrictive than the State guidelines. Whenever a single fecal coliform bacteria sample exceeds 200 colonies per 100 mL, action is taken to identify and eliminate the bacteria source. If counts above 200/100 persist for two or more weeks, the beach is closed.

Contact Information

Click here for current beach status.