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Swim Guide returns for an eighth year this Memorial Day weekend.

On Friday, the environmental nonprofit Sound Rivers will launch the summer-long public service that lets people know where it’s safe to swim in local waterways, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, from the Piedmont to the Pamlico Sound.

“This year, we’ve got more than 50 recreational sites where we’ll be testing water quality on a weekly basis,” said Emily Fritz, Sound Rivers’ volunteer coordinator. “Since we started testing eight years ago, we’ve added more sites because we know people love to get on the water throughout the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds.”

The selected sites are sampled weekly by a team of Sound Rivers volunteers, and those samples are delivered to Sound Rivers’ labs where they are tested for the presence of E. coli in fresh water and enterococci in salt water. In high enough amounts, both can cause an increased risk of gastrointestinal illness and skin infections in both humans and their pets. Sites are given a pass/fail designation based on federal and state water-quality standards.

“When sites fail, that means there’s a lot of bacteria in the water. A lot of times, we see this after a hard rain, especially downstream of heavily developed areas where stormwater runoff is washing everything on the land into the waterways,” Fritz said. “If sites consistently fail — even in dry weather — that can indicate a more significant problem. Over the past few years, we’ve identified several ongoing pollution problems through our Swim Guide testing and have worked with local governments to resolve those issues.”

Eighteen of the Swim Guide sites are located in the Tar-Pamlico watershed: Sunset Park and Tar River Reservoir in Rocky Mount; River Road boat ramp in Tarboro; Port Terminal, Town Common and Wildwood Park in Greenville; Yankee Hall Road, Pactolus; Mason’s Landing, Washington waterfront and Havens Garden in Washington; Cypress Landing in Chocowinity; Pamlico Plantation on Broad Creek; Blounts Bay; Cotton Patch Landing on Blounts Creek; Dinah’s Landing at Goose Creek State Park; Bonner Point and Plum Point in Bath; and Wrights Creek Boating Access Area, Belhaven.

Results are released to the public on Friday afternoons throughout the summer at soundrivers.org/swimguide, through local media and via text. To sign up for text alerts, text “SWIM” to 833-686-5322 to have results delivered weekly. For results in Spanish, text “NADAR” to 833-686-5322.

Based in Raleigh, New Bern and Washington, Sound Rivers has worked for more than 40 years to protect the health of the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico rivers and the communities that rely on them. The two watersheds cover nearly a quarter of North Carolina.

Sound Rivers’ Swim Guide program is sponsored by the Water-Quality Fund in memory of Gene Pate, Grady-White Boats, Public Radio East, Cummins, UNC Pavel Molchanov Scholars, ECU SECU Public Fellows Internship Foundation, City of Greenville, Lake Royale Property Owners Association and Melinda Vann and David Silberstein. For more information, visit soundrivers.org.