The Alliance for the Great Lakes
Adopt-a-Beach™ Program

The Great Lakes are home to some of the most beautiful beaches and shoreline areas in the world! It's our responsibility to ensure their health. The Alliance’s Adopt-a-Beach™ teams are creating positive changes for our Great Lakes.

Year-round Adopt-a-Beach™ Program: Schools, families, businesses and community groups adopt beaches and shoreline areas in their local community to conduct litter removal and monitoring and water quality testing. Adopters work with the Alliance to locate a beach to adopt, log the information they gather into our online database and use it for pollution prevention and educational purposes.

It's fun. It's easy. And here's how it works: Adopters commit to multiple visits per year. During the visits, adopters use Alliance forms to collect data on different aspects of their beach. Adopt-a-Beach™ teams are from all walks of life including: individuals, families, businesses and community groups.

1. Investigate beach health: Answer questions that help identify possible pollution sources at your beach.

2. Tidy up a bit: At each visit, litter is collected, recorded and recycled or disposed of properly.

3. Check the water: Using a simple test, investigate bacteria levels in the water. High bacteria levels can cause beach closings and swimming bans.

Please contact your state coordinator for more information about adopting a beach:

Wisconsin contact:
Todd Brennan
414.559.0317
tbrennan@greatlakes.org

Annual events to help you get started…

You can get started adopting any time of the year by just contacting the state coordinator, however below are a few opportunities to get started in the Alliance’s Adopt-a-Beach™ program:

Spring Kickoff Adopt-a-Beach™ Cleanup: Kick off the beach season by scheduling a data collection visit during the last two weeks of April. Contact us to participate in the Spring!

September Adopt-a-Beach™ Event: Be part of this annual one-day event that is part of an international cleanup and data collection effort. This is the largest single one-day cleanup in the world. The Alliance joins forces with the Ocean Conservancy for the International Coastal Cleanup in September.

We are currently making improvements to the Adopt-a-Beach™ Program. As a result, our online database is off-line. To get new visit forms and learn more about our changes, contact your state coordinator for the Adopt-a-Beach™ Program.

Wisconsin contact:
Todd Brennan
414.559.0317
tbrennan@greatlakes.org