Review Implementation: Progress and Future Steps Rainer Hoenicke San Francisco Estuary Institute, Oakland, CA Brock Bernstein, formerly of EcoAnalysis, Ojai, CA

The Five-Year Review of the RMP generated a lengthy list of recommendations for improvement. Many of these recommendations were technical in nature and are being readily implemented by SFEI staff. Two in particular, however, required more direct and sustained involvement from the Steering and Technical Review committees. The Review Panel recommended that the RMP reconsider its objectives and focus its efforts more carefully on management needs. It suggested that the RMP could accomplish this more effectively if it improved its decision-making processes and clarified the roles, authorities, and responsibilities of the various parties. Beginning in the fall of 1997, the main parties involved in the RMP (Regional Board staff, Program Participants on the Steering Committee, Technical Review Committee, and SFEI staff) participated in a number of facilitated meetings to respond to these two recommendations.

The group found that they shared most of the goals articulated by each of the parties involved in the RMP and clarified each party's role in guiding the direction of the Program. This recognition increased the confidence that the group could resolve any disagreements without risking working relationships and/or the operation of the RMP itself.

As the next step, the parties to the RMP jointly developed more formal procedures for identifying and evaluating new study ideas against environmental management needs, technical criteria, and fiscal implications; designing a long-term planning template; and clarifying data interpretation and synthesis approaches. The Regional Board stressed their desire throughout this and later discussions for the RMP to put greater emphasis on interpretation and synthesis and challenged SFEI to make it happen. Discussion of how to best prioritize and select special and pilot studies resulted in a more informed realization of the complexity of the RMP's planning process and the need for a more tangible structure. The resulting Pilot and Special Study Selection Policy describes in some detail how the efforts of all the parties to the RMP should be coordinated throughout the lengthy study selection and approval process. The documents describing the pilot and special study selection procedure and the Data Interpretation Policy are available at SFEI's website at http://www.sfei.org.

To help guide discussions about what should be monitored and where, and what kinds of questions might be addressed by special studies, the Regional Board prepared a written statement with focusing questions (see boxes). It is important to note that these questions need to be asked within the context of the current knowledge upon which the RMP needs to build to refine answers and to increase the confidence in management actions. As a result, the technical and scientific questions that motivate the RMP now focus directly on providing information needed to address specific issues named by the primary information user (the Regional Board). This also gives Program Participants some reassurance that RMP data can now be transformed into information that will have relevance and purpose, and that the data will be used to continually adjust management priorities at the Regional Board.

The resulting document, and the understanding among the parties it reflects, fulfill the charge from the Review Panel to focus more carefully on management needs. It was achieved only because of the parties' good-faith efforts to improve their communication, clarify their roles, and respect their differences.

 

Regional Board's Information Needs This is the set of questions that are asked on a continuing basis at the Regional Board. As a representation of the Regional Board's information needs and its overall perspective, it does include items that are not the purview of the RMP (e.g., to determine pollutants of concern or define what is and is not controllable). RMP activities should be designed to fulfill one or more of these information needs. Focusing Questions 1. What are the pollutants and pollutant groups of concern? 1a. of the national priority pollutants, which ones are found in the Estuary system and of those, which ones are at levels that may be causing effects? 1b. of pollutants identified through local (as opposed to national) monitoring, which ones have been identified through TIE analyses or are found at levels above those known to cause effects in estuarine ecosystems? 2. What are the overall loadings and mass-balance budgets for pollutants of concern? 2a. what is the implication of historic discharges for mass budgets and fluxes? 2b. what is the relative contribution of point source outfalls, storm drains, large and small tributaries, harbor activities (including dredging), atmospheric deposition, historic deposits, and natural sources? 3. Of the pollutants of concern with ongoing inputs, 3a. what are the sources to the point of discharge? 3b. are these sources controllable? and if so, under what existing regulatory framework and at what level of government? 4. What is the general pattern of levels, fate, and transport of pollutants of concern within embayments? 4a. do the general patterns suggest different levels of risk/concern within embayments (i.e., are mid-Estuary conditions generally good but shallow areas closer to shore more problematic?) 4b. how are these patterns changing in response to natural processes and progressive management actions? 5. Of the pollutants of concern for which ongoing, controllable inputs still exist, which of the controllable source reductions provide the greatest benefit in terms of preventing further degradation and restoring ecosystem function and human health? 6. How effective are management actions? 6a. how have past management actions affected the overall patterns of levels, fate, and transport of pollutants of concern? 6b. are current management actions achieving effective control of ongoing, controllable sources?

These facilitated sessions represented the important first steps of the complex task of re-designing the RMP to meet the revised objectives and the first "edition" of management questions. The involved parties recognized that the objectives and management questions will have to be adjusted periodically as the information base grows.

Beginning in spring of 1998, SFEI initiated a detailed assessment of how the RMP's design should and could be modified to better address the management questions. Workgroups including experts from outside the region have been assisting the parties involved in the RMP to summarize the current understanding about chlorinated hydrocarbons, metals, pesticides, sediment as a pollutant reservoir, and characterization of sources and loadings to the Estuary. These deliberations will result in recommendations for collecting needed information and revising the RMP Base Program. The workgroup addressing chlorinated hydrocarbons completed their deliberations in late 1998, while the other workgroups will submit their recommendations in early 1999. These individual recommendations will then be integrated, evaluated from a statistical design perspective, incorporated into the Five-Year Plan, and phased in as financial resources allow. While the re-design is proceeding, the RMP is not remaining entirely static.