1. National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES): Federal and State laws regulate discharges to marine waters. Two statewide water quality protection plans, (the California Ocean Plan and the Thermal Plan) and coastal RWQCB water quality control plans (Basin Plans) establish narrative and numeric water quality objectives for protection of beneficial uses of coastal waters. Basin plans form the basis for establishing site-specific NPDES permits. NPDES monitoring requires mass measures for each pollutant, the volume of effluent, and particular requirements specific to each permit based on the constituents in the discharge and the specific beneficial uses to be protected in nearby waters. Monitoring requirements differ among discharges/facilities; for example, in areas where a discharge might affect a nearshore area of heavy recreational use, where special bacteriological monitoring may be warranted, or near areas of special biological significance (e.g., wetlands, estuaries, ocean waters) where unique ecosystems require specialized monitoring to assess the health of marine communities. Additionally, Federal Clean Water Act (CWA) section 301(h) waivers from secondary treatment require significantly more monitoring of the marine waters receiving a discharge.

2. State Mussel Watch (SMW): For over 20 years, the SWRCB has monitored water quality at selected locations along the coast through the SMW program. The SMW evaluates the occurrence of toxic substances in estuarine and marine waters of the State through the analysis of mussels and clams. Mussels and clams are moved from relatively clean coastal sites to areas of concern and then later removed for laboratory analysis for various toxic substances which may have accumulated in their bodies. The SMW program has been useful in identifying "hot spots" where pollutants have accumulated, as well as long-term water quality trends where pollutants have either increased or decreased over time. Data from the program have been essential to supporting cleanup orders statewide.

3. Bay Protection and Toxic Cleanup Program (BPTCP): The BPTCP was established by the Legislature in 1989 as a fee-supported program with four major goals: (1) protect existing and future beneficial uses of bay and estuarine waters; (2) identify and characterize toxic hot spots; (3) plan for the prevention and control of further pollution at toxic hot spots; and (4) develop plans for remedial actions of existing toxic hot spots and prevent the creation of new toxic hot spots. The SWRCB has analyzed many sediment samples from enclosed bays and estuaries for chemistry, toxicity, and benthic analysis.

4. San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI): SFEI is an independent, non-profit organization with the mission of providing scientific information for management of San Francisco Bay. Its Board of Directors include representatives from regulatory agencies, dischargers, public interest groups, and scientists. The

San Francisco Bay RWQCB, the Bay discharger/user community, and SFEI collaborated to create the San Francisco Bay Regional Monitoring Program (RMP) in 1992. The RMP is the first large-scale regional monitoring program of its kind in the State of California to take a comprehensive look at pollutant concentrations in water and sediment of an estuary. The San Francisco Bay Estuary (Estuary) receives the treated wastewater of over 50 municipal, industrial, and cooling water dischargers and is impacted by dredging activities and thousands of individually small but cumulatively important pollutant sources. The program is designed to obtain baseline and long-term trend data describing the concentration of toxic and potentially toxic trace elements and organic contaminants in the water and sediment of the Estuary. It determines if water quality and sediment quality in the Estuary are meeting regulatory criteria set up to protect the health of the ecosystem. Currently, there are 68 Federal, State and local agencies, private companies, and special districts that fund and provide resources for the RMP.

5. Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP): SCCWRP is a joint powers agency focusing on marine environmental research in the southern California coastal waters from Point Conception to the Mexican border. Its membership is comprised of representatives from the four largest sanitation agencies of southern California (City of Los Angeles; County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County; County Sanitation Districts of Orange County; and City of San Diego) as well as U.S. EPA, the SWRCB, and the RWQCBs of Los Angeles, Santa Ana, and San Diego regions.

In 1994, SCCWRP led a consortium of 12 organizations in conducting the first integrated, coordinated regional monitoring survey for the Southern California Bight. This survey, referred to as the Southern California Bight Pilot Project , included measurement of the chemistry, toxicity, benthic infauna, and fish assemblages at 261 sites between Point Conception and the Mexican border. Through the efforts of all of the participating parties, SCCWRP was successful in expanding the focus from small-scale compliance monitoring to bight-wide regional monitoring to assess the condition of the overall health of the southern California coast.

1. Evaluate the status and trends of the marine environment (water, sediment, fish/shellfish) over large areas of the coast on a periodic basis. Regional, ambient water quality monitoring paints a picture of the large-scale effects of pollution on an entire marine coastal region. This information is essential to:

2. Inform decision-makers about the effectiveness of water quality programs by providing scientific information on which to evaluate and improve current water quality efforts to protect the marine environment and safeguard human health. Periodic monitoring of coastal water quality conditions provides water quality program managers with the feedback needed to evaluate whether coastal water quality and marine resources are being protected, and whether clean water programs are working as originally designed. Assessments based on a number of media beyond the quality of the water column (e.g., the sediment chemistry and quality, and the presence and biomagnification of contaminants in fish and mammals) provide the information needed to characterize the health of entire marine communities.

3. Support integrative and cooperative efforts to design, plan, and conduct coastal monitoring efforts regionally and statewide, based on common goals and shared resources of all parties interested in healthy marine waters.

4. Support a statewide move towards sound scientific design, the standardization of monitoring and assessment methods, and Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) and toward a centralized means of the statewide evaluation of comparable monitoring data.

1. Long-term commitment: Monitoring activities are generally designed for specific programs often to measure the success or effectiveness of a resource program. It is important that such monitoring efforts remain over the life of the program in order to measure the effectiveness of a program, policy, or standard. For monitoring efforts that assess the condition of a larger environment, maintaining a long-term commitment to monitoring will enable historical comparisons and trend analysis. Over time, management goals and priorities in assessing current environmental conditions will change, inviting a redirection of monitoring resources. Ideally, as resource availability changes, a comprehensive monitoring system is in place to direct monitoring resources to current priorities.

A long-term commitment to monitoring applies both to keeping this internal commitment to evaluate the success of programs and to committing the resources to new environmental concerns as they arise.

comparisons, identification of the influence of natural factors, and, most importantly, will allow evaluation of the effectiveness of water quality protection efforts. Programs for prevention and remediation can require years or decades to take effect and periodic monitoring efforts need to be designed on the same time scale.

environment can be expensive due to both the vast area and to the cost of individual types of analyses. The most cost-effective efforts are those which bring together all stakeholders interested in clean marine waters (marine resource agencies, upstream, coastal, and ocean industrial and wastewater dischargers, citizens, storm water agencies, cities, counties, environmental organizations, etc.) to organize joint monitoring efforts, pooling resources, and jointly designing monitoring programs useful to all participants. This type of cooperative planning initially helps identify redundant efforts and areas in need of monitoring and ultimately reduces costs for all. Cooperative monitoring efforts, especially in regional monitoring, provide a context into which smaller site-specific monitoring efforts can fit (i.e., NPDES and storm water monitoring). As environmental resource management moves away from the command and control approach to forums where numerous parties participate in the protection of the environment, coastal monitoring also needs to reflect this integrated organization.

it is important to clearly identify the information most useful to marine resource managers and the public to better protect coastal water quality and safeguard resources. Often, regional monitoring efforts indicate that agencies do not provide solid objectives to direct and focus research and monitoring efforts. One possible reason for this is that while goals and objectives that may have been defined at one time (e.g., at the time of an original design of a new water quality program or the writing of a permit for discharge monitoring) are not often revisited. Finally, monitoring goals and objectives should be defined periodically and at multiple levels--such as statewide comprehensive and program level--to reflect current coastal concerns over short-term and long-term projections.

based on good science. This will assist in comparing results among programs and guarantee good QA/QC.

information to be comparable among monitoring programs, there must be consistency in monitoring programs in areas such as sampling designs and methods, chemistry, sample analysis, data interpretation, and statistical analysis.

collected as a part of monitoring programs but are not analyzed or reviewed over time. Opportunities must be recognized to evaluate and interpret the data and use the assessment in ongoing coastal water quality control programs.

7. Regular reporting of Results to Decision-makers and the Public: A single entity should take the lead in compilation, oversight and production of timely public reports on the results of monitoring and assessment, such as the "State of the Ocean" report. The reports could be electronically available to the public via Internet.

be flexible to incorporate requirements based on site-specific conditions, changes in objectives of the resource managers, and advances in sampling and analysis protocols.

Parts of the California coastline are naturally defined by their physical, oceanographic, and biological characteristics. Large-scale monitoring efforts could follow naturally defined oceanic boundaries to complement the land-based divisions or political boundaries that currently exist. Such divisions could be based on general delineation; such as northern, central, and southern coastal areas of California; or could follow more specific boundaries.

Identifying priorities in monitoring at several levels (program, statewide, permit-specific) is necessary to help focus the efforts of all water quality programs, as well as to influence the monitoring efforts of regional monitoring programs. Although numerous current monitoring efforts have been designed to determine program or permit specific compliance, over time these need to be reviewed and considered within a larger framework or within a current management objective.

Because of the cost and complexity of coastal monitoring efforts, it is important to integrate the ideas and efforts of all the agencies and stakeholders interested in clean water into the design of coastal monitoring surveys. No one agency alone can afford to conduct a large-scale monitoring effort of significant spatial or temporal scope. Because the marine resources, water quality issues, and monitoring programs are unique to each bioregion, stakeholders within that region are best suited to design and conduct monitoring studies in their bioregions in regard to such factors as choice of the appropriate indicator species and identification of reference sites. General guidelines for consistent monitoring practices among regions are recommended in Section VI (Recommended Coastal Monitoring Strategy). Region or bioregion-wide monitoring plans should be designed to monitor the ambient environment every three to five years.

4. Conduct Monitoring and Evaluate the Results to Assess the Regional and Statewide Conditions and Trends of Water Quality and Marine Resources.

This assessment will provide the feedback needed to evaluate the success of programs. Specifically, the assessment should provide answers to the questions posed by the impacted community such as; are fish and shellfish safe to eat, and is water safe to swim? Further, it would encourage the use of standardized methods and protocols to make future monitoring data more meaningful and comparable statewide.

It is important to provide the public and stakeholders with the results of monitoring programs through published reports or via Internet. Once a marine monitoring evaluation and trends effort is established, annual updates presenting the results of monitoring studies should be produced in the form of "State of the Ocean" report. This will provide feedback to improve the monitoring programs. This task will also serve to help educate the public on how pollutants from land-based activities affect coastal resources. Additionally, it is hoped that such products will invite additional monitoring partnerships from coastal stakeholders.

The results from monitoring efforts will provide both favorable and unfavorable news on various water quality concerns at different times. The fact that coastal pollution comes from a complex array of sources and potentially impacts all stakeholders in clean water, policies are needed that widely investigate concerns and openly present findings to all affected. This serves a variety of purposes including: to provide scientifically based feedback to water quality protection programs for needed evaluations and changes in policies, plans, standards, and permits; to present new information on environmental conditions and dynamics; to highlight improvements made with current efforts; and to highlight the current concerns for future cleanup and monitoring efforts.

Three sets of information would be developed: (a) estimates of the concentration of chemical contaminants in edible fish tissue from important fishing areas along the coast; (b) identification of fish species and chemicals for which concentrations are unsafe in each fishing area; and (c) whether concentrations of pollutants are increasing or decreasing.

This design would enable resource managers to target areas or species for fishing restrictions, determine the size of the contamination problem, and ascertain whether a management action has been effective at reducing contamination.

Sampling would target important sport and subsistence fishing areas along the coast including public piers, kelp beds, river mouths, and outfalls of coastal sewage treatment plants and power plants.

Four sets of information would be developed:

This design would enable resource managers to target areas or species for shellfishing restrictions, determine the size of contamination problems, and ascertain the effectiveness of management actions.

Sampling would target important shellfishing areas including commercial shellfish beds.

Three sets of information would be developed:

This design would enable resource managers to determine how many miles of shoreline exceeds water quality objectives, how often they exceed the objectives, and whether the problems were more prevalent in specific areas. These answers

would allow an assessment of the overall quality of swimming beaches in their region, identify the most vulnerable beaches, and help communicate this to the public through such means as detailed maps.

Sampling would take place at swimming beaches, diving areas, and the mouths of storm drains.

This objective would be approached in two complementary ways, one that provides an overall status report for the coast, or large parts of the coast, and one that identifies conditions in local areas. The first approach, referred to as local monitoring, assesses the ecological health or habitat condition of specific places. It identifies the location of the most and least impaired areas in terms of their biological communities. The second, referred to as regional monitoring, determines the percentage of the whole coastline area that is impaired and unimpaired, respectively.

These findings are useful because they enable resource managers to map the quality of marine habitat, identify the areas that need the most protection, and determine the most significant contaminants responsible for alterations of the marine ecosystem.

In both local and regional monitoring, three sets of information would be developed: (a) measures of contaminant exposure; (b) measures of biological response; and (c) measures of habitat condition.

The choice of sampling points differs considerably between regional and local monitoring. In local monitoring, sampling would focus on areas known or suspected to be contaminated and areas that may serve as sources of contamination. Thus, sampling would focus on urbanized shorelines, oil drilling rigs, etc.

Sampling points would also include places where fresh water meets salt water, the mouths of streams and storm drains, and coastal lagoons. This sampling design assumes that some sources of contamination are upstream in the watershed.

Some locations would be chosen to represent least contaminated conditions to serve as a reference. Finally, bays, lagoons, tidal wetlands, and other features of biological importance would be included.

Regional monitoring defines the larger-scale condition of marine life, determines if known local impacts can be observed at large distances, and assesses the natural variability inherent in the ocean environment. This allows the results from local monitoring to be put in perspective. Thus, local conditions can be defined as better than any other location in the region or in the 10 percent of the State, etc. Also, regional monitoring can assess dramatic episodes that have wide impacts (e.g., El Niño) which may overwhelm local monitoring but have a large influence on the overall condition of marine life.

In general, sampling locations are chosen without regard for the presence or absence of known or suspected areas of contamination or other impairments. This assures that each sampling point represents conditions in an unbiased manner in its section of coastline.

Some areas of the coast (e.g., urbanized bays) would contain more sampling points than others to reflect the greater degree of interest in those areas. However, the points within those areas are still chosen without regard for the location of contaminated areas.

In conclusion, implementation of this recommended coastal monitoring strategy would assist in reducing pollution within coastal watersheds, bays, estuaries, lagoons, and near-shore ocean waters by providing a timely assessment of the water quality. Clearly there is much to be gained by developing a coordinated coastal water quality monitoring strategy. The success of such an effort, however, depends on the full participation of all appropriate state entities. Strong support must come from the highest levels and be carefully developed with input from all affected organizations. The Governor, through Executive Order, could create a Coastal Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment Task Force and mandate participation of all relevant state entities.

Within one year the Task Force would prepare a report to the Governor addressing the feasibility of implementing the recommendations of this comprehensive coastal monitoring strategy and coordinating all state water quality monitoring efforts under a single lead entity (existing or new). The lead entity would be responsible for maintaining and updating the coastal water quality monitoring inventory, developing region specific monitoring strategies in coordination with all interested stakeholders, and identifying mechanisms to fund these efforts.

Finally, the lead entity would be responsible for carrying out the additional provisions of AB 1429. These include determination regarding the extent to which existing water quality objectives, sediment quality guidelines, tissue contaminant burden guidelines, and health standards are being met; sources of pollution in areas where objectives, standards, and guidelines are not being met; and methods for determining the degree of improvement or degradation in coastal water quality over time with respect to these objectives, guidelines and standards.