[From the U.S. Government Printing Office, www.gpo.gov]




































     - 5 6

















      1990-_-






  -~~~ ~-C      OASTAL. ZONE IFRAINCNE
                  ~~~~~~~~~~z ~ ~ ~ ~    ~       ~      ~      ~      A

_   _ _   _ _                           --








                MONITORING

                SOUTHERN

                CALIFORNIA'S

                COASTAL

                WATERS



           Panel on the Southern California Bight of the
              Committee on a Systems Assessment
              of Marine Environmental Monitoring


                     Marine Board
         Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems
                 National Research Council

                    Property of CSC Library

               NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
                  Washington, D.C. 1990



                     U. S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE NO,
       '='             COASTAL SERVICES CENTER
   '7 ~2234 SOUTH HOBSON AVENUE
                     CHARLESTON, SC 29405-2413

,.5










NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the
National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy
of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The menibers of
the panel responsible for the report were chosen for their special competence and with regard for
appropriate balance.
     This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures
approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of
Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.

     The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of dis-
tinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of
science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter
granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the
federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Frank Press is president of the National
Academy of Sciences.
     The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National
Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its
administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences
the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also
sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research,
and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Robert M. White is president of the
National Academy of Engineering.
     The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to 
secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy
matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the
National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government
and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Samuel
O. Thier is president of the Institute of Medicine.
     The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to
associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering
knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies
determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the
National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the
government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered
jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Frank Press and Dr. Robert M. White
are chairman and vice-chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.

     The program described in this report is supported by Cooperative Agreement No. 14-12-0001-
30416 between the Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the
National Academy of Sciences, Contract No. P-32690 with six California municipalities, and State of
California Contract No. 6-213-250-0 with the California State Water Resources Control Board. Federal
agencies that actively worked with the authoring committee include the Environmental Protection
Agency, Minerals Management Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U. S.
Army Corps of Engineers.

Limited copies are available from:

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     Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems
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     Washington, DC 20418

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International Standard Book Number 0-309-04327-1

Copyright Q 1990 by the National Academy of Sciences.

S189

Printed in the United States of America








     COMMITTEE ON A SYSTEMS ASSESSMENT OF MARINE
                ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING
DONALD F BOESCH, Chairman, Louisiana Universities Marine
    Consortium, Chauvin, Louisiana
JERRY R. SCHUBEL, Vce-Chairman, State University of New York,
    Stony Brook, New York
BROCK BERNSTEIN, EcoAnalysis, Inc., Ojai, California
WILLIAM M. EICHBAUM, Conservation Foundation, Washington, D.C.
WILLIAM GARBER, City of Los Angeles (retired), Playa del Rey,
    California
ALLAN HIRSCH, Dynamac Corporation, Rockville, Maryland
FRED HOLLAND, VERSAR-ESM, Inc., Columbia, Maryland
KENNETH S. JOHNSON, Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, Moss
    Landing, California
DONALD O'CONNOR, Manhattan College, Glen Rock, New Jersey
LISA SPEER, Natural Resources Defense Council, New York City
G. BRUCE WIERSMA, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Idaho
    Falls, Idaho


        PANEL ON THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BIGHT
WILLIAM M. EICHBAUM, Leader, Conservation Foundation,
    Washington, D.C.
DONALD BAUMGARTNER, Environmental Protection Agency,
    Newport, Oregon
BROCK BERNSTEIN, EcoAnalysis, Inc., Ojai, California
WILLIAM GARBER, City of Los Angeles (retired), Playa del Rey,
    California
WESLEY MARX, Author, Irvine, California
DOROTHY F SOULE, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Staff
CELIA Y. CHEN, Staff Officer
JERRY M. NEFF, Rapporteur, Battelle New England Marine Research
   Laboratory, Duxbury, Massachusetts
AURORE BLECK, Senior Project Assistant







                              iii







                        MARINE BOARD
SIDNEY A. WALLACE, Chairman, Dyer, Ellis, Joseph & Mills,
   Washington, D.C.
BRIAN J. WATt, Vice-Chairman, TECHSAVANT, Inc., Kingwood, Texas
ROGER D. ANDERSON, Bee Gee Shrimp, Inc., Tampa, Florida
ROBERT G. BEA, NAE, University of California, Berkeley, California
JAMES M. BROADUS, III, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
    Woods Hole, Massachusetts
F. PAT DUNN, Shell Oil Company, Houston, Texas
LARRY L. GENTRY, Lockheed Advanced Marine Systems, Sunnyvale,
    California
DANA R. KESTER, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island
JUDITH T KILDOW, Massachusetts Institute of RTchnology, Cambridge,
    Massachusetts
BERNARD LE MEHAUTE, University of Miami, Miami, Florida
WILLIAM R. MURDEN, NAE, Murden Marine, Ltd., Alexandria,
    Virginia
EUGENE K. PENTIMONTI, American President Lines, Ltd., Oakland,
    California
JOSEPH D. PORRICELLI, ECO, Inc., Annapolis, Maryland
JERRY R. SCHUBEL, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New
    York
RICHARD J. SEYMOUR, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla,
California
ROBERT N. STEINER, Delaware River Port Authority, Camden, New
    Jersey
EDWARD WENK, JR., NAE, University of Washington (emeritus),
    Seattle, Washington

Staff
CHARLES A. BOOKMAN, Director
DONALD W. PERKINS, Associate Director
SUSAN GARBINI, Project Officer
ALEX STAVOVY, Project Officer
WAYNE YOUNG, Project Officer
DORIS C. HOLMES, Staff Associate
PAUL SCHOLZ, Staff Associate
AURORE BLECK, Senior Project Assistant
DELPHINE D. GLAZE, Administrative Secretary
GLORIA B. GREEN, Project Assistant
CARLA D. MOORE, Project Assistant


                               iv











                                 Preface


















                                   PURPOSE

     In 1987, the Marine Board of the National Research Council estab-
lished the Committee on a Systems Assessment of Marine Environmental
Monitoring. The committee's goal was to identify how monitoring con-
tributes to environmental management, to determine why monitoring does
not always produce useful information, and to recommend how more ef-
fective monitoring programs could be designed. The committee decided to
carry out three case studies: the Chesapeake Bay, the Southern California
Bight,l and particulate dispersion.
     The following goals were established for this case study:
     *   to assess the design of monitoring programs in Southern California
in terms of their technical components and linkages to relevant policy
issues;

1 The purpose of this case study was to conduct an overall review and assessment of marine mon-
itoring in the Southern California Bight. Although there is a long tradition of monitoring in
the bight, there is widespread concern that intensive monitoring activities are not efficient and
that the information that results is not sufficiently used for decision making by governmental
agencies. There is also concern that monitoring does not produce a readily accessible, coher-
ent picture of conditions in the bight's marine environment. Accordingly, this study examines
monitoring as a system that includes both institutional and technical aspects, then recommends
possible improvements to this system. This study thus concentrates on the interface between
technical or scientific issues and institutional and policy issues. It does not, other than for il-
lustrative purposes, attempt to describe environmental impacts or actual conditions of marine
waters and living resources in the bight.

                                        v







      *to use the assessment to develop guidance for future monitoring
practice and institutional frameworks in the region; and
    * to assess whether monitoring meets society's needs as manifested
in regulations, public opinion, and scientific research.
    In pursuit of these goals, this study accomplishes four main objectives:q
    1. it describes the natural environmental setting, including the physical
setting and sources of environmental pollutants and habitat change;
    2. it reviews the regulatory and institutional framework, including
monitoring responsibilities in the government, academic, and public sectors;
    3. it discusses the evolution of monitoring and current monitoring
activities in the bight; and
    4. it analyzes current monitoring practice in the context of the first
three objectives and describes a conceptual framework for improved mon-
itoring.
    In combination, these objectives define the overall environmental,
regulatory, historical, and institutional framework within which this study
assesses monitoring in the bight. The emphasis is on systematic use by
regulatory and management agencies of the data collected and not on the
technical adequacy of individual collection activities.


                              METHODS
    The Committee on a Systems Assessment of Marine Environmental
Monitoring established a case study panel to pursue the goals and objectives
described above. The case study panel performed much of its work through
a series of fact-finding meetings held throughout Southern California to
seek viewpoints from the monitoring community. A planning meeting was
attended by panel members, representatives of the California state and re-
gional water quality boards, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, municipal dischargers,
and various research groups. This initial meeting achieved three results:
    1. members identified important issues for the panel to investigate,
    2. prepared a list of knowledgeable experts who would be invited to
make presentations to the panel about these issues, and
    3. specified background information needed for the panel's delibera-
tions.
The Southern California Coastal Water Research Project prepared a report
for the panel providing background information for each monitoring pro-
gram in the bight, including detailed maps and data on sampling design,
parameters sampled, sponsoring agency, relevant permits, and cost.

                                   Ai







              Experts invited to address the panel at subsequent fact-finding meet-
         ings were asked to make written and oral presentations. They were asked to
         consider specific questions about monitoring effectiveness and about their
         personal experiences with monitoring programs. As a result, the panel
         received information from experts knowledgeable about and experienced
         with a variety of issues, including fisheries management, the relationship
         of large-scale ecological processes to monitoring objectives, institutional
         relationships, public health, nonpoint sources of pollution, legal and regu-
         latory requirements, wastewater treatment, thermal discharges from coastal
         power plants, public perceptions and interests, marine science, and moni-
         toring design and implementation. In addition, some panel members made
         field visits in the region. At the conclusion of these fact-finding sessions,
         the panel held further meetings to discuss the structure and content of the
         case study report and to review and discuss draft material.

                                     ORGANIZATION
             This case study is organized into seven chapters:
             Chapter I - The Southern California Bight provides a basic descrip-
         tion of the geography, hydrology, water quality, climate, habitats, and
         natural resources of the area. It also describes land use patterns and
         economic activities.
             Chapter 2 - Sources of Pollution and Habitat Change discusses major
         activities that result in pollution and habitat change, such as oil exploration
         and production, municipal and industrial wastewater discharges, power
         plant thermal discharges, stormwater and surface runoff, aerial fallout, and
         ocean dumping. It also contains a discussion of the characteristics of the
         resultant pollutants and their concentrations in the environment.
             Chapter 3 - Regulatory Framework and Public Concerns sets forth the
         basic state and federal regulatory framework (water quality control, public
         health and safety, and natural resources protection) and the concerns and
         perceptions of the public about certain policy objectives for the bight.
             Chapter 4 - Monitoring and Research Programs in the Southern Cal-
         ifornia Bight discusses the relationship between research and monitoring
         and the general types of monitoring applied in studies of the bight. It
         characterizes the roles of government and of the private sector in these
         activities.
             Chapter S - A Framework for the Analysis of Monitoring sets forth in
         general terms the theoretical objectives for a monitoring program and dis-
         cusses in detail a conceptual framework that will ensure that the objectives
         are achieved.
             Chapter 6 - Analysis of Monitoring Efforts examines specific aspects
F       ~~of certain monitoring efforts in the bight and evaluates the results in light

                                            vii







of the conceptual framework and the societal expectations in Southern
California. Recommendations for change are set forth in this chapter.
    Chapter 7 - Conclusions and Recommendations sets forth the corn-
mittee's conclusions and recommendations.

                       THE STUDY'S AUDIENCE
    This study was requested by the parent Committee on a Systems As-I
sessment of Marine Environmental Monitoring. Its findings and conclusions
and the underlying discussion are an important source of information forv
the work of that committee. However, because of high interest in the con-
dition of the environment and marine monitoring in Southern California
this report will be of substantial interest to parties in that region.
    Although environmental monitoring is most often considered to be
within the exclusive domain of the scientific community, successful design
and use of environmental monitoring depends on a system that reaches
beyond scientists. The general public and interest groups have substantive  
questions about the condition of the marine environment that monitoring
must address. Political leaders and policy makers need to make tough
decisions about the allocation of monetary resources to particular control
strategies, and monitoring results provide information upon which their
success may be documented. Public and private managers must imple-
ment control programs and be able to predict as well as determine their
success or failure on the basis of monitoring information. Finally, the sci-
entific community is vital to the appropriate design and implementation of
monitoring programs.'
    This study, based on an examination of the monitoring system as a
whole, makes recommendations about marine monitoring that respond to
the needs and responsibilities of all these interests. Thoughtful considera-
tion, debate, and (undoubtedly) modification can contribute to the evolution
of marine monitoring in Southern California to make it a strong component
of the overall program of environmental protection and restoration.







2The incorporation of relevant scientific knowledge in monitoring programs helps ensure that
important questions will be properly addressed. Appropriate scientific analysis of monitoring
results will also increase understanding of how the marine environment functions and responds
to human impacts.

                                   viii









                    Acknowledgments
















    The Panel on the Southern California Bight would like to express its
gratitude to a number of individuals whose assistance has been invaluable in
the development of this report. The committee thanks Dr. Jerry M. Neff for
his efforts as rapporteur. Appreciation is also conveyed to Jack Anderson
and staff scientists at the Southern California Coastal Water Resources
Project for providing the committee with the background document A
Historical Review of Monitoring in the Southern California Bight, as well as a
wealth of additional assistance. Brock Bernstein worked long and hard to
shape the final report.
    Many thanks also to the following individuals for their valuable input to
the report: Blake Anderson of the Orange County Sanitation District, Gary
Davis of the National Park Service, Dorothy Green of Heal the Bay, Robert
Grove of Southern California Edison Company, Janet Hashimoto of the
Region IX office of the Environmental Protection Agency, George Jackson
of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Burton Jones of the University of
Southern California, Edward Liu of the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality
Control Board, John McGowan of Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
John Melbourn of the San Diego Department of Health Services, Richard
Methot of the National Marine Fisheries Service, Robert Miele of the
County Sanitation District of Los Angeles, John Mitchell of the Los Angeles
Department of Public Works, Paul Papanek of the Los Angeles County
Department of Health Services, John Stephens of Occidental College, and
Ken Wilson of the California Department of Fish and Game.
    The committee also expresses its special appreciation to the federal

                                  ix







government liaisons who played an integral part in helping to make this a
relevant and useful document: Alan Mearns of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, Brian Melzian of the Region IX office of the
Environmental Protection Agency, Fred Piltz of the Minerals Management4
Service, and Douglas Pirie of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
    Finally, a special thanks to the state and local representatives ofI
California whose concern for the region's coastal ocean environment and
support for this project allowed this endeavor to transpire: Susan Hamilton
of the city of San Diego, Irwin Haydock of the Los Angeles County
Sanitation District, Robert Montgomery of the city of Oxnard, Michael
Moore of the Orange County Sanitation District, John Norton of the
California State Water Resources Control Board, Jan Stull of the Los
Angeles County Sanitation District, Frank Wada of the Hyperion 'Rieatment
Facility, and Craig Wilson of the California State Water Resources Control
Board.































                                  x









                         Contents
















EXECUTIVE SUMMARY                                                     ...................... xui
1 THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BIGHT ..1.......... 
        Physical Setting, I
        Habitats and Natural Resources, 9
        Land Use and Economic Activity, 11
        Summary, 14
2 SOURCES OF POLLUTION AND HABITAT CHANGE .                             ....16
        Major Sources of Contaminants, 17
        Classes of Contaminants, 22
        Overview of Environmental Problems, 35
        Summary, 41
3 REGULATORY FRAMEWORK AND PUBLIC CONCERNS ... 42
        Regulatory Sector, 42
        Interagency Cooperation, 50
        Public Concerns for the Bight, 51
        Summary, 5
4 MONITORING AND RESEARCH IN THE SOUTHERN
    CALIFORNIA BIGHT ......................54
        The Monitoring Sector, 55
        The Research Sector, 86
        Summary, 95


                               xi







5 A FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF MONITORING ... .97
       The Importance of Objectives, 98
       'Me Role of 'Ichnical Design, 99
       A Framework for Prioritizing Problems, 102
       Summary, 113
6 ANALYSIS OF MONITORING EFFORTS............116
       Institutional Objectives and Their Limitations, 118
       Technical Interpretation and Decision Making, 134
       Overall Organization of Monitoring, 138
       Summary, 140

       Conclusions, 143

       Recommendations, 144
REFERENCES............................146








                             Executive Summary















             With nearly 15 million people in the region, Southern California's
         coastal ocean' is coming under increasing environmental stress. There is
         little coastal space that is not subject to some form of development or
         resource utilization-including oil extraction, commercial and recreational
         fisheries, municipal and industrial wastewater discharge, ship traffic, and
         recreation.
             There is in the region a broad public perception of environmental
*       ~~degradation.  This is set against a backdrop of extraordinarily complex
         natural ecosystem processes that are not fully understood, extensive public
         and private efforts to protect and restore environmental systems, and great
         public concern for the environment.
I        ~      ~~Environmental management efforts have included numerous marine
         environmental monitoring programs. These efforts have been both ex-
         tensive (for example, the long-term time-series resource assessments of
         the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation [CaICOF11) and
         elaborately detailed, such as the monitoring programs for municipal waste
         water and electric power plants. The total amount of money and effort
         expended by public utilities, private industry, and government agencies in
         marine monitoring efforts in Southern California is conservatively estimated
         at well over $17 million annually.

         'This report addresses the region known as the Southern California Bight, the oceanic region
         from Point Conception, California to Mexico and seaward from the coast to the California Cur-
         rent.

                                            xiii







    As part of a larger assessment of marine environmental monitoring, the
National Research Council analyzed the effectiveness of marine environ-
mental monitoring in the Southern California Bight. The study committee
found an extensive system of monitoring of environmental conditions in
the bight, but also widespread concern that the system is not efficient and
that its products are not sufficiently used for decision making.
    The committee found that because monitoring in the bight is predom-
inantly organized around discharge permits responding to water quality
regulations, there is a fragmented approach to assessing environmental
quality. There are deficiencies in monitoring for public health concerns
and nonpoint discharges. Also, there are no existing formal mechanisms
for integrating the wide array of monitoring activities and their findings; as
a result, it is difficult-if not impossible-to present a coherent picture of
the state of the bight as a whole. There is a glaring need for a regionwide
monitoring system and for effectively reporting findings to the public, the
scientific community, and policy makers.
    In response to these findings, the committee recommends that a re-
gional monitoring program be established that would address public health
impacts, natural resources and nearshore habitat trends, nonpoint source
and riverine contamination, and cumulative or areawide impacts from all
contaminant sources.
    A regional program should involve participation by the public and
scientific communities at local, state, and federal levels and should include
built-in mechanisms to communicate its conclusions to regulatory agen-
cies and the public, the committee noted. It should also include review
mechanisms and allow easy alteration or redirection of monitoring efforts,
whenever justified by monitoring results or other information. Anticipated
benefits from a regional program would include:
    * greater cost efficiency through use of standardized sampling, analysis,
data management, and coordination of effort;
    * ability to address specific questions about environmental conditions
and resources and to alter or redirect monitoring efforts as needed; and
    * more effective use of monitoring information in decision making by
ensuring better communication with and involvement by the public and
scientific community.
    Implementing a regional program will require coordination among lo-
cal, state, and federal agencies and the integration of their regulatory, data,
and management needs. Only through an integrated systemwide approach
can important environmental and human health objectives identified by so-
ciety be successfully attained: ensuring that it is safe to swim in the ocean
and eat local seafood, providing adequate protection for fisheries and other
living resources, and safeguarding the health of the ecosystem.

                                   xiv











          The Southern California Bight













    No system of marine monitoring exists in the abstract. Monitoring
occurs in specific geographic regions that have particular qualities derived
from their natural characteristics and processes. The marine environment
in turn is affected by the human activities that take place in and adjacent
to it. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of monitoring in the
Southern California Bight therefore requires a basic knowledge of the
physical setting and human activity within it.
    This chapter describes the physical setting of the Southern California
Bight: its bathymetry, drainage basin, circulation and ocean-ography, cli-
mate, and hydrology. It also describes the natural habitats and resources of
the region and the land use and economic activities of the adjacent coastal
areas. Chapter 2 will describe in greater detail the sources and types of
habitat change and pollutant loadings to the marine environment that stem
from human activities in the bight.


                         PHYSICAL SETTING
    The Southern California Bight is bounded on the north, east, and
southeast by a long curve of the North American coastline extending from
Point Conception in Santa Barbara County, southeast 357 mi to Cabo
Colnett, Baja California in Mexico (Figure 1-1). It is bounded to the west
by the California Current, which flows southeasterly approximately parallel
to the coast and the edge of the continental shelf The bight system includes

                                   I





                                   2

more than 37,000 mi2 of ocean and approximately 8,700 mi2 of adjacent
coastal areas draining into it.

                              Bathymetry
    The bathymetry underlying the Southern California Bight has many
features unique to the continental shelf surrounding the United States.
For this reason the area was named "continental borderland" by Shepard
and Emery (1941). Topographic features in the continental borderland and
adjacent mainland drainage basin are summarized in Table 1-1.
    The waters of the bight overlay an alternating series of 2,000- to 8,000-
ft-deep basins and surfacing mountains that form 9 offshore islands or island
groups and several large submerged banks and seamounts. Nearshore,
12 large submarine canyons influence movement of sediments and other
materials deposited on the bottom. There are also 32 submarine canyons
on the continental slope bordering the U.S. portion of the bight, including
20 canyons that cut into the mainland shelf (Emery, 1960). Offshore, there
are 18 marine basins, 3 of which are essentially anoxic.
    These submarine canyons and deep basins are important sites of accu-
mulation of fine-grained sediments and particulate materials from land
runoff, ocean discharges, and ocean dumping.  An important feature
throughout the bight is that deep water is close to shore.  All slopes
are steep, ranging from 5 to 15 percent. Island and mainland shelves are
narrow, from less than 0.6-mi wide to a maximum of 125-mi wide. The
mainland and island shelves constitute only about 11 percent of continental
borderland area; marine basins cover about 80 percent of the borderland
area.
    The most important embayments of the mainland shelf are Santa Mon-
ica Bay and San Pedro Bay (separated from each other by the prominent
and steeply sloping Palos Verdes Peninsula and shelf), San Diego Bay, and
Tbdos Santos Bay in Baja California. Although no true estuaries penetrate
the mainland coast, there are at least 26 wetland systems in coastal lagoons
and at the mouths of transient streams and rivers in the U.S. portion of the
bight (Figure 1-2)(Zedler, 1984). The total area of these coastal wetlands is
only about 129 mi2, an estimated 25 percent of the area they encompassed
when the first Europeans arrived in Southern California in the late 1500s.

                             Drainage Basin
     The onshore mainland drainage basin of the Southern California Bight,
occupied by an ever-increasing human population of nearly 15 million, is
a triangle-shaped, higher elevation extension of the offshore bathymetry.
It consists of nearly equal areas of mountains and basins or plains (Table






                                         3

  Point Conception       119ï¿½            118ï¿½            117              116ï¿½


    Baan __            Heneme Canyon
   SANMIGUELI1 SAN.TACRUZ1mugu Canyon  LOS ANGELES
       ~~~340ï¿½~ zfs ~~ w~Dume Point                                        -
     SANTA I          n-a              t Redondo







 0                                                                         -  330
        <\i~ ~ ~ ~esat Basin                 ..Cano









                                          500L~            if~~"aonto








              2000                 PW  004


                                      1500
                               Coi Basin                     ~000nin50










520  -12000                                                tO000,11    S. San Cintin  - 30S
                                  "4sqo f  t ~ ~  ~ ~112,0   00           1




          120             119             1180            117               116


FIGURE 1-1 Bathymetry of the Southern California Bight, emphasizing its deep basins
(shaded). Depth contours are shown in fathoms (1 fathom = 6 ft). SOURCE: Moore,




1-1). The rising shoreline is characterized by vertical scarps and wave-cut
cliffs. There are as many as 20 raised marine terraces on land that are an
extension of the 5 submerged terraces that lie at depths to 289 ft along the
mainland shelf (Emery, 1960).
     The drainage basin is bordered on the north by transverse (east-west
ranges extending from Point Conception eastward along the Santa Monica,
ranges extending from Point Conception eastward along the Santa Monica,





                                     4

TABLE 1-1 Topography and Bathymrnetry of the Southemrn California Bight Area

                               Area        Area
Feature                         Mia          % Total        % Borderland

Mainland
mountains                       4,600         10.0         ---
basins and plains               4,090          9.0         ---
Subtotals                        8,690         19.0        ---

Borderland
islands                           340          0.7           1.1
mainland shelf                   1,890         4.1           6.2
island shelves                   1,390         3.0           4.6
bank tops                       2,420          5.3           8.0
basin and trough slopes         19,120        42.0          63.3
basin and trough floors         5,120         11.2          16.8
Continental slope                1,960         4.3 ---
Abyssal seafloor                 4,740        10.4

Subtotals                       36,980         81.0        --

Totals                          45,670       100.0          100.0

SOURCE: Emery, 1960.

San Gabriel, and San Bernardino mountains; and on the east by coastal
ranges that continue southward down the length of the Baja Peninsula
(SCCWRP, 1973). These mountain ranges separate the semiarid coastal
plain from the very arid desert basins.
    Because of the semiarid nature of the drainage basin and the highly
seasonal pattern of annual precipitation, most of the rivers draining into
the bight are small and are dry for much of the year. From north to south,
the major rivers in the drainage basin are the Santa Clara, Los Angeles,
San Gabriel, Santa Ana, San Luis Rey, San Diego, and Tijuana rivers
(Figure 1-2). Much of the length of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel river
beds and other major drainages are now lined with concrete. Most rivers
have dams and debris basins constructed upstream to aid in flood control.
In Southern California, there are separate systems to handle stormwater
runoff and municipal wastewater flows.


                      Circulation and Oceanography

    The western border of the Southern California Bight is marked by the
California Current, which flows southeastward along the coast, continuing
the clockwise geostrophic transport of water in the North Pacific Ocean
(Figure 1-3). Water current regimes in the Southern California Bight are











                                    .SANTA CLARA RIVER                        MR GA RIT
                                            I  LOSANGELESRIVER
                                                             SAN GA RIEL RIVER
         POINTCONCEPTION                                      ï¿½ SANTAANA RIVER





                      C/ ï¿½I                ,,,,.,,    ,~                 S~.R ~MTA MARGARITA
                               0 C e PALOSV RD S IS                              REY RIVER


          I. TIJUANA ESTUARY
          2. SWEETWATER MARSH.
           PARADISE CREEK MARSH.    14. UPPER NEWPORT BAY  t            SAN DIEGO RIVER
           E. F& JST. MARSHES, 15. BOLSACHICADAY
           SOUTH SAN DIEGO BAY WETLANDS  1. ANAHEIM BAY    I.
          3 MISSION BAY MARSH (KENDALL FROST RESERVEI.  HUNTINGTON BEACH MARSH.  ,:7-ANA RIVER
i          FAMOSASLOUGHANDCHANNEL      SANTAANA RIVERMARSH
           SAN DIEGO RIVER MARSH     17. ALAMITOS BAY ILOS CERRITOS MARSH)
          4. LOSPENASOUITOS LAGOON   1  SHALLONA WETLANDS IDEL REY LAGOON).  (
          5. SAN DIEGUITO LAGOON       EALLONA LAGOON. AND SALLONA MARSH
          . SAN ELIJO LAGOON        19. MALIBU CREEK
          7. 8ATIQUITOS LAGOON       20 MUGU LAGOON
          . AGUAHEDIONDA LAGOON     21 MCGRATH LAKE
          . BUENA VISTA LAGOON      22 SANTA CLARA RIVER          2
         ID SAN LUIS REY RIVER MARSH  23 VENTURA RIVER
         I. SANTA MARGARITA RIVER   24. CARPINTERIA MARSH
         12, LASFLORESMARSH         25 GOLETASLOUGH
         13. SAN MATEO MARSH        2R. DEVERAUX LAGOON

         FIGURE 1-2 Location of Southern California coastal wetlands and major rivers. SOURCE:
         Zedler, 1984.



         complex and variable on seasonal and longer time scales. Only the general
         patterns will be described here. Because of the eastward indentation of the
         coast in the Southern California Bight, a surface counterclockwise gyre, the
         Southern California Eddy, breaks off the California Current and carries
         water northward through the central bight (Jones, 1971; Hickey, 1979).
         The eddy is usually well developed in summer and autumn and weak in
         winter and spring.
              Closer to the shore along the mainland shelf, prevailing onshore (north-
         westerly) winds reverse this flow, resulting in a net alongshore surface flow
         toward the southeast at speeds of 1 to 3.3 cm/s (Lentz and Winant, 1979).
         Hendricks (1977) reported that the mean direction and velocity of water
         currents just below the thermocline are upcoast at 3 cm/s, and that this
         near-bottom current has a significant offshore component. Coastal currents
         reach maximum velocity in water depths of about 197 ft (Jackson, 1986).
         These complex nearshore currents are interrupted by coastal headlands
         and upwelling epicenters and respond to both regional and local land-sea
         breezes. During the afternoon, sea breezes are responsible for both cool-
         ing on land and shoreward movement of natural and man-made floating
         materials.
              There is also a very nearshore circulation pattern caused by surf along





                                    6



          .\    1 t  Santa Barbara


                                            Los Angeles






                                               1     ,~ Am  San Diego

                                                    3' - --------- MEX.
             16oc.    '_ S'%                              Tijuana
     Prevailing Winds     .  
 - Surface Water Flow                                      E sen a
  .-- Mid-depth Water Flow
     Below 660 ft (200 m)  
 '  Freshwater Inflow   170C 
 -  Average Water Temperature
     at 33 ft (10 m)                                          a

FIGURE 1-3 Patterns of nearshore bathymetry, wind, and ocean circulation in the Southern
California Bight. SOURCE: Zedler and Nordby, 1986.



the beaches (Jones, 1971). The surf-driven current consists of transport
alongshore inside the breaker zone to zones of outward-flowing water
called "rip currents." The rip currents carry water transported inshore by
the surf back offshore. This local circulation is important in beach erosion
and nourishment and in transport of wastes from offshore discharges and
stormwater runoff into and through recreational areas.
    Below about 500 ft, there is a northwestward current flow of 25
cm/s or less inshore of the California Current (Figure 1-3). This water
is of equatorial Pacific origin and has a higher temperature, salinity, and
phosphate concentration and a lower oxygen concentration than the deep
water in the California Current located at the same depth but farther
offshore (Jones, 1971). This northward flow is weak but progressive through
the deep basins and more vigorous along the mainland shelf and slope.
Ordinarily, the northward countercurrent does not surface within the bight,
except occasionally during the winter. This flow may surface nearshore off
Los Angeles in late fall and winter and move northward as the Davidson
Current, possibly as far as Vancouver Island, Canada, particularly during





                                   7

the periodic climatic anomalies known as "El Nifio" events (described in
detail later in this chapter). There is still some uncertainty about the
continuity between the Davidson Current and the deep countercurrent in
the bight (Hickey, 1979).
    Because surface waters in the bight originate primarily from the south-
flowing California Current, they are more nutrient-rich, less saline, and
cooler (annual range 130 to 200C) and undergo less seasonal temperature
variation than nearshore surface waters at similar latitudes along the east
coast (e.g., South Carolina and Georgia). Temperature drops with increas-
ing water depth to about 40C in the basins. Dissolved oxygen concentration
also tends to decrease with depth, such that waters below the sill depths of
the Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and San Pedro basins are periodically or
permanently anoxic (Emery, 1960). Due to anoxic conditions, bottom water
and sediments in these basins are virtually devoid of higher life forms. The
basins are major repositories for sediments and other particulate materials
(including sludge) transported onto the shelf from the land and coastal
waters.


                         Climate and Hydrology
    The climate of Southern California is like that of the Mediterranean,
with most of the precipitation occurring during winter months. Monthly
mean temperature and precipitation for Los Angeles and San Diego are
summarized in Table 1-2. Monthly mean temperatures in both cities vary
by only about 100C, though periodic extreme temperatures may range over
about 350C. Mean monthly precipitation ranges from near zero in June,
July, and August to 2.0-3.3 in. (50 to 85 mm) in December, January, and
February.
    It is now clear that many environmental changes in the bight are
connected more with long-term, low-frequency, interannual patterns than
with seasonal cycles. Displacement of cool surface waters-including their
inhabitants-in the bight by clear, nutrient-poor warm water is correlated
with periodic warm-water events off the coast of Peru and in the tropical
Pacific. These are the El Nifio events, which occur several times per decade
(e.g., 1976, 1979, 1982-1984, 1986-1987) and are characterized by warm wa-
ter, a deeper surface-mixed layer, elevated sea levels, increased abundance
of southern planktonic and pelagic organisms, alterations of benthic com-
munity structure, and degeneration of coastal kelp beds (Jackson, 1986).
El Nifio events and other long-term oceanographic changes also affect the
weather in the bight. In some years (e.g., 1969 and 1982-1983) floods rule
the coastal plain; in other years drought occurs (e.g., 1976-1977). In some
years, there is a deep-penetrating, southerly ocean swell that mixes and
resuspends mainland shelf sediments.




















TABLE 1-2 Average Monthly Temperature and Precipitation in Los Angeles and San Diego, California


Parameter Location J F M A M J                                                                             $ A S O N D


Temperature ï¿½C Los Angeles 13 14 15 16 18 20 22 23 22 19 17 14
               San Diego 13 14 15 16 18 19 21 22 21 19 16 OO
                                                                                 14


Precipitation mm Los Angeles 60 85 60 30 6 2 0 0 7 13 26 79
               San Diego 51 55 40 20 4 1                                                      0 2 4 12 23 52

SOURCE: Rudloff, 1981.




                                        9

         Crustal blocks between numerous faults move with alarming frequency,
     causing earthquakes. Oil and tar continuously ooze from shelf and island
     seeps, periodically creating large marine oil slicks. During some droughts,
     brush fires, fed by northeasterly Santa Ana winds, spew plumes of ash and
     soot onto the adjacent sea and coastal plain. Landslides and subsidence
     are common and predictable in certain hill and bluff areas. In short,
     the predominantly mild sunny climate of the Southern California Bight
     area does not reflect the major impacts of occasional meteorological and
     geological events.
         Fresh water enters the bight from a variety of sources. Riverine runoff
     from rain and melting snow is very seasonal. Much of the water imported
     from Northern California through the California Aqueduct, from the high
     Sierra Mountains through the Owens Valley Aqueduct, and from the Col-
     orado River through the Metropolitan Aqueduct (Talble 1-3) eventually
     finds its way to the bight through land and subterranean runoff and dis-
     charges of waste water. The cost of wastewater disposal from municipal
     and industrial activities is 5 to 10 times the cost of supplying the water
     (World Bank, 1980). Disposal costs for agricultural drainage are about half
     those of water supply, unless treatment is required.
         Because of the semiarid climate of the bight drainage basin, the vol-
     umes of water entering the bight from wastewater discharges are compara-
     ble to those from riverine and storm drain inputs. Because stormwater flow
     is more variable than wastewater flow, in dry seasons and years wastewa-
     ter fow far exceeds that of storm water. For example, the mean treated
     wastewater flow to Santa Monica Bay between 1967 and 1982 was 346
     million gal/day, with the annual mean increasing from 320 million in 1967
     to 379 million gal/day in 1982 (Garber, 1987). Stormwater flow to Santa
     Monica Bay over the same period averaged 143 million gal/day and ranged
     from 51 million gal/day in 1972 to 400 million gal/day in 1969. However,
     nearly all of this stormawater flow occurred during and shortly after a few
     winter storms each year. Thus, the only continuous freshwater flow to the
     bight is treated municipal waste water. This includes primary, secondary,
     and tertiary treated sewage discharged directly to the ocean from coastal
     treatment plants and tertiary treated sewage discharged from inland treat-
    ment plants to Southern California rivers and streams. This pattern of
    freshwater input to coastal waters is quite different from that in much of
    the rest of the coastal United States, where riverine and stormwater flow
    far exceeds wastewater flow.

I            ~~~~HABITATS AND NATURAL RESOURCES
         Natural habitats and resources characteristic of the Southern Califor-
    nia Bight include abundant deep water close to shore, extensive coastal





                                         10

TABLE 1-3 Water Supply and Demand in Southern California

Parameter                                        1990                2010

Estimated population (millions)a                  15.29               17.75

Water supply (millions of gal/day)
 local                                           1,955               1,955
 reclaimed                                        143                  152
 Los Angeles Aqueduct                             375                 375
 Colorado River                                   714                 420
 state water project                             1,143               1,295
Total supply                                     4,330               4,147

Water utilization (millions of gal/day)
 residential                                     1,607               2,090
 commercial                                       473                 643
 industrial                                       330                 411
 publicb                                          411                 464
 agricultural                                     794                 580
Total demand                                     3,615               4,188

Supply minus demand                             + 715                 - 41

Per capita demand (gal/day)
 residential                                      105                  118
 commercial                                        31                  36
 industrial                                        22                  23
 publicb                                           27                   26
 agriculture                                       52                   30

Total per capita demand                            237                 233


aCalifomia Department of Finance data, assuming half of total increases in county projections
will occur in coastal drainage area.
I'ncludes unaccounted for water.

SOURCE: California Department of Water Resources, 1987; Los Angeles Department of Water
and Power, 1985-1986 Annual Report; State Water Contractors, Bay-Delta Hearings, June 1987,
SWC Exhibit Numbers 3, 6, 13, 17, 76.



and offshore oil reserves, commercially or recreationally valuable fish and
shellfish stocks, wildlife breeding and overwintering areas, kelp beds, beach
and water recreation areas, and a climate tempered by the special oceano-
graphic processes reviewed above.
     As a result of the local oceanographic regime, particularly the Southern
California Eddy, the bight is an enclave of communities of marine life
specific to the area, except during El Nifio years. It is also a trap for warm
water and natural and anthropogenic materials entering the area from land,
sea, and air.
     Six species of seals and sea lions and the northernmost Pacific popula-
tion of pelicans breed on several islands. Regional populations of porpoises







occur in the bight, and the entire population of gray whales spends a por-
tion of fall and winter there during its annual migration between the Bering
Sea and Baja California.
    Commercially exploitable stocks of anchovies, sardines, and mackerel
spawn and grow primarily in the bight, as do bass, croakers, flatfishes, and
rockfishes. Mariculture operations have been established in Agua Hedionda
Lagoon in San Diego County (mussels and oysters) and in the Santa Barbara
Channel (oysters, mussels, and scallops) (California Department of Health
Services, 1988b). Deeper waters of the bight host a diversity of mesopelagic
fishes that spend part of their life cycle in surface waters. The benthic fauna
of the continental shelf, especially polychaetes and crustaceans, are very
diverse and constitute an important food source for many fish species.
    Rocky intertidal and subtidal areas, which cover large areas of the
shoreline of the bight, host a rich diversity of epifauna (snails, mussels,
crabs, etc.) and attached seaweeds. Beds of the giant kelp Macrocystis
pyrifera, which attach to the bottom and can grow to over 164 ft in length,
extend along the coast of the bight. There are 33 locations in the bight
between Point Conception and San Diego where kelp beds are found at
least periodically at water depths ranging from 20 to 65 ft. From the 1930s
to 1979, individual kelp beds occupied up to 2,720 acres, with the total area
occupied by kelp beds in the range of 12,000 to 15,000 acres (Foster and
Schiel, 1985). The size and distribution of kelp beds varies spatially and
temporally in response to changes in natural and anthropogenic conditions.
Natural changes in surface water temperature and nutrient concentrations
associated with El Nifio events, and possibly with longer-term ocean warm-
ing trends, have resulted in declining kelp beds in some areas, and winter
storms like those of 1983 and 1987 can devastate large kelp beds. These
storms probably are the most important factor influencing the condition
and areal extent of kelp beds, but human activities-such as kelp harvests,
boat traffic, and possibly wastewater discharges at Palos Verdes and Point
Loma-have also affected local giant kelp beds.


                LAND USE AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY

     A combined U.S.-Mexico population of about 15 million people lives
in, works in, and enjoys the coastal climate and resources in the drainage
basin of the Southern California Bight. The population in this area has
increased steadily since the 1890s.
     Although once primarily an agricultural region, Los Angeles and ad-
joining counties now comprise the manufacturing, petrochemical, commer-
cial, and aerospace center of western North America. There also are large
military bases throughout the area. Accessible land space is now largely





                                  12

occupied by several hundred cities, hundreds of square miles of residential
areas, highways, airports, and citrus groves.
    Because of current land and water use practices, the entire region is
heavily dependent on water diverted from northern and eastern California
and the Colorado River system (Thble 1-3) that would otherwise flow into
the San Francisco Bay and delta area, Mono Lake, the Owens Valley east
of the Sierra Mountains, and the Gulf of California. Water utilization in
Southern California is projected to increase in the next 22 years due to an
expected 16 percent increase in population, and despite a projected slight
decrease in per capita consumption of water (Tble 1-3). However, at the
same time, total freshwater supply will decrease due to partial loss of water
rights to the Colorado River. Disputes over other water sources continue,
and these supplies are by no means assured for future use by Southern
California. As a result, demand will be greater than supply by the year
2010, requiring increased conservation and on-site reclamation.
    As described in "Climate and Hydrology," the base flow for most
of the Southern California drainage system is now derived from treated
waste water (see Chapter 2, Figure 2-2 for further detail). Secondary or
tertiary treated sewage from inland treatment plants makes up much of the
permanent flow of the Los Angeles, San Gabriel, Rio Hondo, and Santa
Clara rivers in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. These discharges, as
well as other NPDES-permitted (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination
System) flows to the rivers are strictly regulated to protect water-contact
recreational areas. However, storm drains and nonpoint source runoff to
rivers are not regulated. Such flows may contain elevated concentrations
of chemical contaminants and pathogens.
    Highways are the principal basis of transportation in Southern Califor-
nia. Heavy manufacturing (metals, chemicals) is located near the coast and
within convenient access to well-developed port facilities in Los Angeles,
Long Beach, and San Diego harbors. The most active shipping, shipbuild-
ing, and maintenance in west6rn North America occurs in the combined
complex of Los Angeles-Long Beach harbors; and military activities oc-
cur around Mugu Lagoon and Anaheim Bay (munitions), along the north
San Diego County coastline (Camp Pendleton Marine Base), and at San
Clemente Island (target practice). The harbors of Long Beach and San
Diego were principal Pacific staging areas during World War II (1941-1945)
and continue today as active naval and ship building bases.
    Oil extraction has occurred for eight decades within and offshore of
coastal city limits of Goleta, Carpinteria, Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Monica,
Redondo Beach, Wilmington, San Pedro, Long Beach, Seal Beach, and
Huntington Beach. Terminal Island and adjoining areas sank up to 30 ft
(Allen, 1973) when oil was pumped out in the 1930s and 1940s. Offshore
oil extraction from shore-based facilities began near the turn of the century





                                            13

         along the Santa Barbara Channel and slightly later in southern Los Angeles
I0  ~    and Orange counties. Oil production from offshore platforms began 35
         years ago on nearby shelves (I to 3 mi from shore) and now extends nearly
         to the shelf break. Proposals for more extensive offshore oil exploration and
         development in the bight are being hotly debated because many Southern
         Californians consider them a great potential pollution hazard to the marine
F      ~ ~environment.  An extensive shore-based infrastructure has sprung up to
         support offshore oil production activities-including pipelines, refineries,
         produced water treatment facilities, and oil terminals.
             Year-round commerce, fisheries, and marine recreation, combined with
         steady population growth, have resulted in constant development of har-
         bors, marinas, and coastal home sites in Southern and Baja California.
         The region's 30,000 to 40,000 pleasure boats are concentrated primarily
         in Marina del Rey on Santa Monica Bay, in the new Los Angeles City
         Cabrillo Marina, in Alamitos Bay, Long Beach Marina, Huntington Har-
         bor, Balboa-Newport harbors, northern San Diego Bay, and Mission Bay;
         and secondarily in marinas at Oceanside and Dana Point, and in Ox-
         nard, Ventura, and Santa Barbara. Because pleasure boats are sources of
         fuel leaks and toxins from antifouling paints, they constitute a potential
         environmental problem that has not yet been quantified.
             Fourteen coastal electric power plants in Southern and Baja California
         supply much of the region's power and recirculate nearly 11 billion gal/day
         of nearshore seawater, some of which controls circulation in harbors and
         marinas. Most generating plants operate on oil delivered by offshore
         tankers, and oil spills occasionally result from accidents involving tankers
         supplying fuel to plants in Southern and Baja California (e.g., Nishikawa-
         Kinomnura et al., 1988). For example, in Los Angeles/Long Beach harbors
         where most of the tanker terminals are concentrated, an estimated 1.3
         million gal of oil and fuels have been spilled since 1976; in the Santa
I     ~     ~Barbara Channel, since 1969 over 3.5 million gal of oil have been spilled
         from two oil platforms and a tanker collision. The San Onofre Nuclear
         Generating Station (SONGS) is the only nuclear plant on the coast of the
         bight.
             Much of the region's 1.5 billion gal/day of raw sewage is collected via
         large-scale intercity networks of trunklines and transferred to 13 coastal
         Publicly Owned Tteatment Works (POTWs) where effluent is subjected to
         primary, advanced primary, and in some cases secondary treatment and
         discharged to the ocean via submarine outfall diffusers at depths from
         65 to 328 ft. Tertiary treatment currently reclaims almost 150 million
         gal/day of water, and there is a future potential to reclaim 0.5 billion
         gal/day. The reclaimed water is used for landscape irrigation, groundwater
         recharge, industrial processing, and control of saltwater intrusion into
         coastal aquifers. Storm water is completely separated from sewage in all






                                   14

major systems, but overflows occasionally occur. However, as discussed
above, several POTWs discharge secondary or tertiary effluent to Southern
California rivers for transport to the ocean. For example, the Los Angeles
and San Gabriel rivers each receive about 100 million gal/day of treated
waste water. Percolation of storm water into aging sewer lines during storms
occasionally overwhelms the system, resulting in release of raw sewage to
the bight.
    The least developed areas of the bight include the northwesternmost
37-mi stretch of coast between Point Conception and Santa Barbara, the
12-mi coastline of Camp Pendleton in northern San Diego County, the
central San Diego County coastline, the Channel Islands, and the Baja
California coast south of Todos Santos Bay, near Ensenada.
    In summary, there is little coastal space that has not been subject
to construction, mineral extraction, or other forms of resource utilization.
There is keen competition for coastal space, access, and resource utilization
and, as a consequence, conflict among the many potential users. The
California Coastal Commission, formed as a result of a 1969 ballot initiative,
resolves conflicts related to multiple uses of the coastal zone.


                              SUMMARY
    There are several natural and anthropogenic features of the Southern
California Bight that are important for the consideration of environmental
impacts and marine monitoring in the bight. The continental shelf through-
out the bight is very narrow, and deep water exists near shore as a result
of the bight's many submarine canyons and basins. The bight's western
border is defined by the California Current, and the complex pattern of
currents, eddies, and counter currents creates enclaves of indigenous bio-
logical communities. Many important environmental processes and changes
are related more to long-term, low-frequency, interannual patterns than to
yearly or seasonal cycles. The semiarid drainage basin of the bight receives
sparse rainfall and much of the human activity in the area depends on
imported water. As a consequence, many area rivers are dry much of the
year, and wastewater flows constitute the only continuous freshwater input
to the bight. Wastewater flows from treatment plants exceed natural flows
from runoff and storms. Because waste water and storm water are man-
aged by separate systems, however, the bight does not have the combined
sewer overflow problems that characterize other coastal areas in the United
States.
    The Southern California Bight contains rich biological resources that
support diverse commercial and recreational activities. In addition, many
marine mammal species, including the entire gray whale population, spend
part or all of each year in the bight.






                                    15

    Finally, as a result of Southern California's large population and
attendant intense economic and recreational activity, there is little coastal
space that has not been subject to construction, mineral extraction, or other
forms of resource utilization. This activity has resulted in extensive habitat
change and large and varied inputs of contaminants to the bight. These
are reviewed in the next chapter.








                                  2
 Sources of Pollution and Habitat Change
















    Southern Californians have lived with contaminants and habitat change
since before 1572, when Juan Cabrillo's ship entered the Bahia de Los Fuo-
mos (Bay of Smokes, now Santa Monica Bay) and witnessed coastal Indians
sealing their boats with tar from local oil seeps. Tobday, the ever-growing
population of about 15 million has dramatically increased its utilization of
marine resources and the types and amounts of contaminants produced
and released to the Southern California Bight. These contaminants stem
from sewage discharges, aerial fallout, land runoff, industrial and munitions
disposal, dredged material disposal, and thermal enrichment. As a result,
some of the bight's coastal waters and underlying sediments have become
polluted and marine resources have been degraded.
    This chapter describes the major human activities that have impacted
the bight's marine environment and discusses in detail the various con-
taminants that may derive from these activities. They include wastes from
petroleum exploration and production, radionuclides, pathogenic organ-
isms, waste heat, organic matter, nutrients, trace metals, and synthetic
organic chemicals. Since this chapter is intended to provide an overview
of contamination, sources and amounts of contaminants-rather than their
environmental impacts-are emphasized, followed by a brief overview of
the regional and local environmental problems that have attracted public,
regulatory, and scientific attention.




                                  16






                                     17

TABLE 2-1 Total Estimated Average Daily Wastewater Flows in 1984-1985 to the Southern
California Bight from Seven Large Publicly Owned Sewage Treatment Plants

Outfall Name                                Discharge (millions of gal/day)
                                          Primary     Secondary    Sludge

Oxnard, Ventura County
   Sanitation Districts                    None          18          None
Hyperion, Los Angeles
   City Bureau of Sanitation               292           97             4'
Joint Water Pollution Control
   Plant, Los Angeles County
   Sanitation Districts                    183b         179          None
County Sanitation Districts
   of Orange County                         94          138          None
South East Regional
   Reclamation Authority                    12.5        None         None
Encina Water Pollution
   Control Facility                         11           5           None
Point Loma, City of San Diego               156         None         None

Totals                                      742         443             4
Grand total                                                          1,190

'Terminated, per court order, November 1987.
'Advanced primary, which removes 80 percent of solids (primary removes 60
percent).

SOURCE: SCCWRP, 1986a.


                MAJOR SOURCES OF CONTAMINANTS

    Sixteen municipal sewage treatment plants discharge partially treated
sewage directly into the U.S. waters of the Southern California Bight. In
addition, more than 230 million gal/day of treated sewage is carried by
coastal rivers and storm drains from inland Publicly Owned Treatment
Works (POTWs). In 1985, over 1.2 billion gallons of effluent were dis-
charged daily into the bight's coastal waters by seven major municipal
wastewater dischargers ('Thble 2-1 and Figure 2-1).
     Over the years, major strides have been made to decrease the amounts
of total solids and contaminants in the discharges, even as the total vol-
ume of sewage discharges has increased (Figure 2-2) (Southern California
Coastal Water Research Project [SCCWRPJ, 1986a; Summers et al., 1987).
    This has been accomplished primarily by a gradual but progressive shift
over the last 100 years from discharge of raw sewage, to discharge of primary
treated sewage, to discharge of advanced primary and secondary treated
sewage (Figure 2-3); by a gradual phaseout of pipeline discharge of sludge;
and, most important, by source control. In 1985, 62.4 percent of the total
sewage from the seven major dischargers received primary treatment, 37.2










          121ï¿½                            120ï¿½                              119ï¿½                            118ï¿½                             117ï¿½
                 i                i, I i                                                                                                         I  I


                                               ï¿½& ~~~~~ *'~~~~~~ .  ' ~~~San Gabriel Mountains
                             Pt. Conception      .        .                                      . .
                            "~"'"  ~          ...~ Santa Barbara    ,N

                                                                   ~ Ventura       Santa Monica Mountains
                                                              -~Ventura
                                                               ~e'Oxnard *
                                                                                 \< ~Mugu L;agoon.~ ~San Bernardino Mountains
                                                                     '~~uu Lagoon,
                                                                       -   Pt. Dume .;,Santa Monica   Los Angeles
                                                                  ~  _...>    <   <-. Marina del Rey                                               34
34                      San Miguel                                 acap            HYPERION.
                                               Santa Cruz I.
                                 Santa Rosa I1                            Santa Monica Bay        Palos Verdes Long Beach
                                                                                        Peninsula O'r.. Lg.
                                                                                           P-en,    Alamitos Bay
                                                                                       JWPCPï¿½ San PedroI Huntington Beach
                                                                                                   Bay         Newport Beach
                                                             Santa Barbara I.            ORANGE COUNTY            ,.  Dana Pt
                                                                                                        "SERRA.    ~.' San Mateo Pt.
                                                                                         ï¿½ l.      .        :SONGS "*.-

                                                               '"'~%~~               ~ Santa Catalina I.Carlsbad
                                                   San Nicolas I.                                                     ENCINA rsa

330                                                                                                                                                      33



                                                                                    San Clemente 1.                                  San Diego
                                                                                                                    PT LOMA*

                                                                                                                   San Diego Bay c...Me(cO
                                          I   I   I   I  I      ,          I          I          I          I          I          I'
          1210                            120ï¿½                              119ï¿½                             118ï¿½                             117ï¿½

FIGURE 2-1 Major dischargers into the Southern California Bight.





                                    19


   1,400 -

    1,200 -

   1,000 -
0          - 
LL    800-
C]         - 
(5  600-

     400-

     200-
            ! I                           I      I 1      I   l    I I
        0
       1880         1900         1920          1940         1960         1980
                                        YEAR

FIGURE 2-2 Municipal wastewater flow (millions of gallons per day) for the years 1890
to 1990 through sewage treatment facilities in Southern California that discharge treated
wastewater to the Southern California Bight. SOURCE: Summers et al., 1987.


   1,000 -


     800-

,_


            -~~~~~~J
uE 600-
o]                                                                           I
CD)        -;
2    400 -                                                            ,._.,


     200  -
                 ~~~~-
                          ~____.,~,,~      /                                     ,
       0              L--4------- I i                                      I
        1880         1900         1920         1940          1960        1980

FIGURE 2-3  Annual municipal wastewater flow to the ocean (millions of gallons per day)
by treatment level in Los Angeles County, California (raw, -; primary, - - -; secondary,
-.-.-.). SOURCE: Summers et al., 1987.


percent received secondary treatment, and 0.4 percent was anaerobically
digested sewage sludge, discharged from the Hyperion Treatment Plant.
     The Hyperion Treatment Plant operated by the city of Los Angeles
discharged sludge from 1957 through 1987 via an ocean outfall in 318 ft of





                                   20

water at the head of the Santa Monica submarine canyon in Santa Monica
Bay. The County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles discharges the liquid
phase produced by dewatering sludge by centrifugation. Prior to 1983,
this waste water contained high concentrations of solids (sludge). In 1983,
new centrifuges with improved solids recovery (90 to 95 percent) came on
line, resulting in a significant reduction in solids emissions. The Sanitation
Districts of Orange County ceased discharging sludge to the ocean in 1984.
The city of San Diego's Point Loma  reatment Plant discharged sludge to
the ocean only during emergencies, when a pipeline to the Mission Bay
drying beds was inoperative.
    Most sewage sludge is now disposed of onshore. However, the shift
from primary to secondary treatment results in a substantial increase (ap-
proximately double) in the volume of sludge generated. Although it has
been suggested that various ocean disposal options may be reconsidered
for handling increasing volumes of sludge (Conrad, 1985), ocean dumping
is no longer an option. Other possible uses of sludge are composting, use
in industrial processes, and landfill cover.
    Because the Southern California Bight region is semiarid, design re-
quirements for storm water and sanitary sewer-handling systems are quite
different. As a consequence, storm drainage and sanitary sewer systems
have been separate throughout the history of the region, unlike nearly all
other major U.S. coastal urban areas. Surface runoff from land enters the
bight through 150 natural streams (Figure 1-2) and 18 hydrologic units. In
addition, there are several major channels in Los Angeles, Orange, and San
Diego counties for stormwater runoff. In the Los Angeles County Flood
Control District alone, there are 2,000 mi of underground drains, 500 mi
of open channels, and 50,000 catch basins. Most of the surface water flow
of 405 million gal/day (peak value) enters the bight from 20 major streams
and channels, mostly in pulse inputs during winter storms. There are, in
addition, hundreds of individual storm drains that discharge directly to the
ocean.
    Harbors and marinas are sources of local and, in some cases, regional
contaminant inputs to the bight. For instance, a 1973 study (SCCWRP,
1973) indicated that 80,000 gal of antifouling paints containing 180 tons of
copper were applied annually to many of the 35,000 recreational boats and
numerous commercial and naval vessels that use these facilities. Most of
this copper eventually dissolved into the water. In recent years, organotin
compounds have largely replaced copper in antifouling paints, creating an
even greater problem because of their high toxicity to marine animals. San
Diego Bay and Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors are contaminated
with organotins, with measured concentrations in the water column in the
range of 0.02 to 0.93 mg/liter, and concentrations in sediments at least
a hundredfold higher (Grovhoug et al., 1986). Many power boats and





                                   21

TABLE 2-2 Estimated Annual Inputs (Metric Tons/Year) of Trace Metals to the Southern
California Bight
                  Municipal    Dry       Storm runoff           Thermal
                  waste water   fallout    1971-     1972-      discharge
Metal             1976         1975      1972        1973        1977
Cadmium (Cd)         45           0.84     1.2          2.8       0.3
Chromium (Cr)        593          6.6    25            60         0.6
Copper (Cu)         507          31       18           42         2.1
Lead (Pb)            190        240       90          210         0.8
Mercury (Hg)          2.6        ---      ---           0.43 ---
Nickel (Ni)'         307         12       17           41         0.7
Silver (Ag)          20           0.06     1.1          2.6 ---
Zinc (Zn)          1,060        150      101          240         1.8
'Before initiation of industrial wastewater source control.
SOURCE: Young et al., 1973, 1978.


submerged metal structures are equipped with sacrificial anodes designed
to help prevent corrosion of submerged metal structures. These anodes
leach aluminum, copper, and zinc.
    Along the coast of the bight, there are 14 steam electricity generating
stations that use sea water for once-through cooling. Thtal cooling-water
flow from the plants is about 10.7 billion gal/day. The San Onofre Nu-
clear Generating Station (SONGS) alone has a base flow of about 2.4
billion gal/day. These flows introduce heat and small amounts of biocides
(chlorine), radionuclides, and metals (Table 2-2) into the bight ecosystem.
In addition, cooling-water intakes entrain large numbers of fish larvae
and plankton and impinge adult fish and other marine organisms. Dur-
ing the special 316b study period from October 1978 through September
1980, Southern California Edison Company's eight coastal power plants
impinged an average of 2.2 million fish per year, at an average total weight
of 215,000 lbs (Herbinson, 1981). Fish impingement since this study period
has averaged approximately half this amount. This is because surf perches,
which made up a large percentage of fish impinged during the study pe-
riod, decreased drastically in abundance during the El Nifio periods of the
1980s and have only recently begun to reappear (K P. Herbinson, Southern
California Edison, Co., personal communication).
     Other sources of contaminant inputs to the bight include more than 60
discharges permitted under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination
System (NPDES), from coastal industrial operations, more than 25 permit-
ted discharges of produced water from offshore oil and gas platforms, spills,
atmospheric fallout, and permitted ocean dumping of dredged material and
drilling muds. The volumes of permitted discharges from coastal industries
and offshore oil production platforms are small compared to wastewater





                                   22
discharges from municipal treatment plants. The Chevron refinery at El)
Segundo discharges about 6.5 million gal/day of treated brine and process
water to Santa Monica Bay. Offshore oil or gas production platforms may
(if permitted by NPDES) discharge up to about 0.25 million gal/day of
produced water.
    Inputs of various waste waters are not evenly distributed along the
coast. Most of the inputs are located between Point Dume and San Mateo
Point. They include approximately 82 percent of municipal wastewater
effluents, 95 percent of discrete industrial wastewater discharges, 70 percent
of power plant cooling water returns, and 71 percent of surface-water runoff.
Oil and gas production and associated discharges occur in state and federal
waters between Point Conception and Huntington Beach. Thus, there are
large areas of the bight north and south of Los Angeles where discharges
of waste waters to the bight are minimal.


                   CLASSES OF CONTAMINANTS

         Oil Exploration and Production Wastes and Petroleum
    Natural seeps along the coasts of Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los An-
geles, and Orange counties intermittently or continuously discharge large
quantities of oil and tar to nearshore waters of the bight. Fischer (1978)
estimated that as few as 2,000 and as many as 30,000 metric tons (10 million
gal) of oil enter the Santa Barbara Channel each year from natural seeps,
the best known at Coal Oil Point. (By comparison, the 1989 Exron Valdez
oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, leaked 11 million gal of oil into
marine waters.) The intertidal zone at Goleta is chronically contaminated
with oil and tar from this seep. One hundred years ago, the U.S. Fish
Commission steamer Albatross dispatched an observer to report on a huge
fish kill extending from Santa Barbara to San Diego. He counted thousands
of pelagic and dernersal fish on the Santa Monica Bay beach at Redondo,
many of them smelling of petroleum, and suggested that the event was
caused by seepage from offshore "oil springs."
    The first offshore oil well in the world was drilled in 1898 from a
wooden pier extending into the surf zone near Sumnmerland, California. By
the mid-1980s, more than 25,000 oil and gas wells had been drilled in U.S.
coastal and outer continental shelf waters. In Southern California, a large
number of oil and gas fields has been discovered along the coast, both
in state waters and in federal lease tracts between Point Conception and
Huntington Beach (Figure 2-4). Additional fields are now being developed
in federal waters north of the bight between Point Conception and San Luis
Obispo. As of July 31, 1987, a total of 318 exploratory and 633 development






                                        23

 121'      45'        30         15       120'        45         30        119'15'
                                                                               -  35-
   3-Geographical  *Santa Maria                        45   30    5   118
     Mile Line   /San Luis
                                                               Long Beach
                                                         San 
                                 Californiaro                              3345
                                                       45         424lro~f~   3  45

                                                       Huntinglon



                                                                4*  *t <  |      Hydocarbn Fl   |  -30
                         ï¿½Lompoc                       Beach      1


30'                                                           ?,?,ota,  -30
                                      7-10 r 7 ~ -21      24 Santa Barbara
                 /10   ~=  i~Q  l~sl)           ~`                    pinterla
                                                                         AntDura
                 ~~~~~~~~~15* '~~~~~~~~~~- 

                Pacific Ocean                                         36


34  I                      I          I        1 I                    I          I  34'
     12         45        30         i  '     120 45                 30        119-15

FIGURE 2-4  Major offshore oil and gas fields in state and federal waters of the Southern
California Bight. Names of fields are 1, San Miguel; 2, Point Sal; 3, Point Pedernales;
4, unnamed 0443; 5, Bonito; 6, Electra; 7, Point Arguello; 8, Rocky Point; 9, Jalama;
10, Sword; 11, Government Point; 12, 13, Conception Offshore; 14, Sacate; 15, Pescado;
16, Cuarta Offshore; 17, Alegria Offshore; 18, Hondo; 19, Caliente Offshore; 20, Gaviota
Offshore; 21, Moleno Offshore; 22, Capitan; 23, Naples Offshore; 24, Ellwood; 25, South
Elwood Offshore; 26, 27, Coal Oil Point; 28, Santa Rosa; 29, Dos Cuadras; 30, Summerland
Offshore; 31, Pitas Point; 32, Carpinteria; 33, Rincon Offshore; 34, Santa Clara; 35, West
Montalvo; 36, Sockeye; 37, Hueneme; 38, Venice Beach; 39, Playa del Rey; 40, Torrance;
41, Wilmington; 42, Belmont Offshore; 43, Huntington Beach Offshore; 44, Beta Northwest;
45, Beta; 46, West Newport Offshore. SOURCE: MMS, 1987.


wells had been drilled in federal lease tracts off Southern California, most
of them in the bight (Minerals Management Service [MMS], 1987).
     As early as the 1920s, state fish and game wardens were frequently
citing oil operations for beach spills and fish and shellfish kills. By the
1930s, these officers began reporting cooperation, cleanup, and adoption
of preventive measures by the offshore oil industry to avoid oil spills.
However, in large part because of the highly visible Santa Barbara Channel
oil blowout of 1969, many people in Southern California consider offshore
oil exploration and production to be a highly hazardous and polluting
activity. In U.S. waters, spill records from offshore platforms show that of
5 billion barrels of oil produced on 41 million acres of offshore tracts leased
in federal waters since 1954, 61,000 barrels were spilled (MMS, 1987), less
than 0.001 percent of production.
     During the 1950s and 1960s, marine life barely existed in the inner





                                  24

Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors, due mainly to oxygen depletion
resulting from the discharge of refinery waste waters directly into the inner
harbors (Soule and Oguri, 1979; Reish et al., 1980). By the late 1960s, these
inputs were reduced and partly diverted to the Los Angeles County sewage
treatment plant at Carson, from which they were discharged with treated
sewage off Palos Verdes. The harbors recovered, but their sediments
remain heavily contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons, metals, and
other contaminants.
    Today, many sources of petroleum hydrocarbon inputs to the ocean
are recognized (National Research Council [NRC], 1985), and discharge of
treated sewage may be a major source of aromatic and aliphatic hydrocar-
bons in coastal waters. Eganhouse and Kaplan (1982) estimated that the
five largest municipal wastewater treatment plants in Southern California
discharge a combined total of 17,400 metric tons per year of petroleum
hydrocarbons to the Southern California Bight.
    Dunn and Young (1976) measured elevated concentrations of the car-
cinogenic aromatic hydrocarbon, benzo(a)pyrene, in the mussel Mytilus
edulis in Southern California. The highest concentrations occurred in mus-
sels collected at harbor entrances. More recently, Anderson and Gossett
(1986) confirmed that some Southern California harbor sediments and biota
contain elevated concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Re-
sults of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA)
Mussel Watch Program reveal three locations in the bight where mussels
contain elevated concentrations of total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons:
San Diego Bay, Los Angeles Harbor, and Marina del Rey (Boehm et al.,
1988). These high-molecular-weight aromatic hydrocarbons are derived
from creosoted pilings, industrial (especially refinery) effluents, domestic
sewage, oil spills, aerial fallout, and bilge water from ships, particularly
crude oil tankers.
    It is difficult, if not impossible, to construct a complete mass balance
and describe long-term trends for all sources of inputs of petroleum hy-
drocarbons to the bight. However, inputs of petroleum hydrocarbons in
treated sewage are known to have declined as the "oil and grease" fraction
of the sewage declined during the last 15 years due to improved removal
methods and implementation of source control and pretreatment programs.
For the major treatment plants monitored by SCCWRP (1986a), oil and
grease discharges decreased by approximately one-half, from 63,000 metric
tons per year in 1971 to 34,300 metric tons per year in 1985.
    Concentrations of total oil and grease in runoff from land and stormwa-
ter flows can be quite high. Gossett et al. (1985) estimated that the mass
emission of oil and grease from the Los Angeles River was 28,600 metric
tons in 1985. Some of this undoubtedly is derived from treated waste water
discharged to the river by sewage treatment plants upstream.





                                  25

    Produced water containing up to 59 mg/liter total oil may be discharged
to the ocean. If there were 25 platforms in the Southern California Bight,
each discharging 0.25 million gal/day of produced water containing 50
mg/liter total oil, the amount of petroleum discharged each year from this
source would amount to 450 metric tons, which is significantly less than
the amount discharged from municipal wastewater outfalls in the bight.
Refinery discharges have not been quantified but probably contribute a
similar amount.

                             Radionuclides
    During the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, atmospheric testing of
nuclear weapons by the United States, France, and the Soviet Union
in the tropical Pacific, the southwest United States, and elsewhere led to
the release of large amounts of radioisotopes into the atmosphere and to
significant fallout of radionuclides throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
There was considerable concern in California about contamination of leafy
vegetable crops. Young and Folsom (1973) reported that in 1967 mussels
and barnacles were contaminated with radio-manganese, cobalt, and zinc
in a gradient extending from shore to far out to sea. By 1971, these
radionuclides were no longer detectable in mussel tissues. Concentrations
of plutonium and americium in mussels from the bight are not elevated
above normal background values (Goldberg et al., 1978b). Two ocean
dump sites designated in the bight for the disposal of radioactive wastes
were used between 1947 and 1968. There is continued public concern
about possible emissions of radionuclides to the bight from SONGS at San
Clemente, and in treated sewage effluents. All discharges to the air and
water from SONGS are monitored for radioactivity (Southern California
Edison Company, 1987; see also Chapter 4). Sea water from the cooling-
water outfall region contained natural background levels of potassium-40,
but no radionuclides derived from the station. Ultratrace concentrations
of cobalt-58, cobalt-60, silver-110, and cesium-137 derived from the station
were detected in fish and invertebrates around the outfalls. Monitoring data
from 1979 to 1985 revealed that concentrations of these radionuclides were
not increasing over time in the animal tissues. The highest concentrations
observed were only 1.8 percent of the levels that must be reported to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

                        Bacteria and Pathogens
    Raw sewage was discharged directly into the Southern California Bight
beginning before the turn of the century. However, it was not until the
1940s that public concern about the human health risks from pathogens





                                  26

associated with this discharge led to closure of beaches along Santa Monica
Bay and in Orange County. During the late 1950s, these beaches were
reopened to swimming as treatment practices improved and wastewater
outfalls, were diverted to deeper locations. Daily monitoring of bacteria
has revealed that coliform counts at beach stations in Santa Monica Bay
declined by several orders of magnitude between 1945 and 1964, and have
since fluctuated around this lower level (Figure 2-5).
    In spite of improvements elsewhere in the bight, significant bacterial
contamination of swimming beaches persists south of San Diego. This is
due, to the discharge of raw sewage from Tijuana, Mexico, directly into the  
surf zone just south of the U.S.-Mexican border or into the Tijuana River,
which empties into the bight just north of the border (Hickey, 1986). As a 
result, Border Field State Park and beaches as far north as Imperial Beach
remain under quarantine. This problem persists despite the diversion
of up to 13 million gal/day of sewage from Tijuana to the San Diego
metropolitan sewer system, which occurred until 1986, when the Tijuana
treatment facility came on line. San Diego now only treats emergencies
(averaging less than I million gal/day). The total sewage flow for Tijuana 
has been estimated by the U.S. EPA and the International Boundary and
Water Commission at between 32 and 38 million gallday.Thday, regulatory
limits for coliforms in recreational waters are occasionally exceeded at some
beaches following pump failures or overflows at treatment plants or flows
into the stormwater drainage system due to infrequent heavy precipitation.
Discharge of toilet wastes from recrea-tional vessels can be a major source
of bacterial contamination in Newport Harbor and other marinas (Santa
Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, 1985). While regulatory limits
have not been established for enteroviruses and other viral pathogens, the
presence of such viruses in wastewater effluent and in sea water has been
established (Morris et al., 1976).
    Concern about pathogens in coastal waters of the bight has historically
focused on beaches and the adjacent surf zone. However, increased use
of offshore kelp beds by recreational and commercial divers prompted
the State Water Resources Control Board to amend the California Ocean
Plan to extend monitoring of surface waters for bacterial contamination to4
offshore kelp beds.

                          Thermal Discharges
    The 14 coastal power plants along the U.S. and Mexican shore of
the Southern California Bight generate a tremendous amount of excess
heat annually. In 1972 coastal power plants generated an estimated 2 x
107 kw of excess heat (SCCVWRP, 1973), and that amount is substantially
higher at present. Much of this heat is discharged to the coastal zone









                      1943-1947
z                162 MGD - Screening;
3000             solids incineration

    2000-                             1948
                      192 MGD - Screening, chlorination:
I                                   solids incineration
<                                                   1949
w     1000  -                      201 MGD--Screening, chlorination;
       800  -                               new 1/mi outfall,
                600-'E~~~                  ~solids digestion
E      600  -                                                                                 1962
CD1950
       400                 \               197 MGD - Primary treatment,         164 MGD - Primary--5-mi outfall;
z                                           Chlorination, solids digestion,      100 MGD- standard rate secondary,                   1978-1983
a             -                             filtration, drying                   1-mi outfall;                            268 MGD primary--5-mi outfall;
Ei                                      \solids digestion,                                                                95 MGD standard rate secondary,
                   zr ~~~~~~~~~                                           ~ 200  -  1951-1957   ~ 7-mi outfall           5-mi outfall;
                                                                                                                     solids digestion,
W                                          A      250 MGD - High rate secondary,                                          7-mi outfall
                                                Chlorination, solids digestion,                        1963-1977
O       1nr                                       filtration, drying
o       100  -                                    filtration, drying                         240 MGD- Primary-5-mi outfall
e-       80                                                           1959                    100 - MGD standard rate secondary,
L        60  -                                                                               5-mi outfall;
         60                                            264 MGD - High rate secondary,        solids digestion,
O        4    -chlorination, solids digestion,                                                7-mi outfall




z                                                            O

0    10
<          1946          1950           1954           1958          1962           1966           1970           1974           1978          1982
LJ
Hi                                                                            YEAR

FIGURE 2-5 Counts of coliform bacteria at beach stations adjacent to the Hyperion
sewage treatment plant between 1946 and 1983. SOURCE: Garber, 1987.






                                  28

of the bight as waste heat in once-through cooling water. Approximately
10.7 billion gal/day of sea water is used by coastal power plants in the
bight for once-through cooling water (personal communications, Southern
California Edison Co., Los Angeles Department of Water and Power,
San Diego Gas and Electric Company). This water may be discharged
to the ocean at elevated temperatures, provided the temperature of the
receiving water does not exceed 4C above ambient at 1,000 ft from the
cooling-water discharge (California thermal plan [State Water Resources
Control Board, 1975]). The potential effects of thermal discharge have
been studied extensively and found to be either minimal or not extending
beyond the immediate vicinity of the pipe (Southern California Edison Co.,
1973). Traces of biocides and metals dissolved from the cooling coils are
discharged (regulated by NPDES permits) with the cooling water.


                 Particulate Organic Matter and Solids
    In lakes, estuaries, and poorly mixed marine basins, high concentrations
of organic matter and inorganic nutrients from human and industrial wastes
can stimulate bacterial and phytoplankton growth, leading to eutrophication
and oxygen depletion. Oxygen depletion of the water can lead to severe
damage to benthic and pelagic biotic communities (Rabalais et al., 1985).
    The index most frequently used to indicate the tendency of a waste to
cause oxygen depletion in the receiving water is the biological oxygen de-
mand (BOD). BOD emissions to the bight have been estimated synoptically
only once for all major sources-sewage, runoff, and industrial effluents
(SCCWRP, 1973). However, new studies are under way. In 1971 and 1972,
about 95 percent of the 297,000 metric tons of BOD discharged to the
bight each year was from sewage. By 1985, BOD emissions from the seven
major treatment plants had dropped to about 255,000 metric tons per year,
and showed a substantial further decrease when ocean discharge of sewage
sludge ceased.
    It should be noted that since the early 1960s, sewage-derived BOD has
been discharged directly to the ocean, not to bays, harbors, or estuaries
(discharge of cannery wastes at Terminal Island ceased in 1978). Before
that time, serious hypoxia in the bottom waters of Los Angeles and Long
Beach harbors and San Diego Bay was nearly chronic. Since the 1960s,
depressions in the concentration of dissolved oxygen in the sediments
have always been minor in the open bight, even within offshore sewage
discharge zones. Depressions of dissolved oxygen in the water column due
to wastewater discharge have not been detected. Thus, little benefit to the
dissolved oxygen resource is apparent from the substantial efforts to reduce
BOD in sewage effluents. This issue merits further investigation.
    The total suspended solids emissions in sewage from the seven major





                                  29

treatment plants have declined from 288,000 metric tons per year in 1971
to 205,000 metric tons per year in 1986, due in large part to the use
of advanced primary treatment and the progressive shift to secondary
treatment (SCCWRP, 1986a). These changes, along with source control,
decreased chemical contaminants discharged to the bight (Figure 2-6).
These improvements have not been without costs. They have resulted in
increased loadings of sludge to landfills and could add to air pollution
from sludge incineration in the future. Thus any regional approach to
waste disposal options must ultimately consider the tradeoffs among air
and water quality and land use.
    A budget for suspended solids mass emissions to the bight from all
sources has not been completed. 'Total suspended solids concentrations
in stormwater flows have been monitored routinely for many years, but
this information has not been synthesized and analyzed for long-term
trends.  In 1971 and 1972, the amount of suspended solids introduced
in stormwater runoff was nearly equal to that introduced in municipal
wastewater discharges (SCCWRP, 1973). The amount of suspended solids
introduced in nonsewage industrial waste waters is much less than that
introduced in sewage and stormwater. In the early 1980s, suspended solids
discharged in waste water from five coastal refineries amounted to about
10,000 metric tons per year. By comparison, natural fluxes of suspended
solids in the bight, mainly from erosion, are many-fold greater than those
due directly to man's activities (Emery, 1960; Kolpack, 1987).


                Dissolved Nutrients and Eutrophication
    Various forms of nitrogen and total phosphorus are monitored rou-
tinely in municipal waste waters, but are rarely monitored in other effluents
to the bight. The amount of ammonia nitrogen (the most useful form to
phytoplankton) discharged in municipal waste water from the seven largest
treatment plants, has not varied much over the years. Between 1971 and
1985, mass emission of ammonia ranged from 36,200 to 56,600 metric tons
per year (SCCWRP, 1986a). Discharges of nitrate, nitrite, and organic
nitrogen were much smaller and more variable. By comparison, discharges
of ammonia in industrial waste water and runoff from land in 1971-1972
was estimated to be 9,500 and 440 metric tons, respectively (SCCWRP,
1973a).
    Eppley (1986) compared the rate of input of ammonia and particulate
organic nitrogen to the Southern California Bight in waste water to the rate
at which these materials are generated by natural biological processes. The
flux of ammonia and particulate organic nitrogen in municipal waste water
is equivalent to the natural fluxes of these forms of nitrogen taking place
under 772 mi2 and 127 mi2 of sea surface, respectively. Thus, it is likely






                                    30

    12 -                               0'     60 -
                           Kf r"IAd                                * Silver
                                               I ze, |           * Cadmium
    10       -0-^Eo                300         50   q/ ï¿½              d



          a  6 -                - 1B0 Z    tE) 30 -         n0    Z

  E     Suspended Solidsx                   L         \    /            -wO
        4_*Flow                 i-120 o     i20 At
          t~rr    \_ i-                             g







     2            =-60                         10- 
                                          -~~~~~~I





      71  73  75     79  81  83  85              71 73  75  77 79  81  83  835      
                 YEAR                                         YEAR 
    1-400                         -             Z nc
                     .  Chromium



          0~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~z
         1200 ~      ~        ' -                           t- i' ope 












         Go 1                              20,000l 
  40 8-                           -18z       8,000   3  


                                    A-A-,~ ""








  200 -                                     1,000 -
         Suspended Solids    !\/ ,0I













    20-                   'S                4 oo-  ~,     '        
           4  ROW~~~~~j~  - 120 ï¿½               0'*'
     2z-                  y      - 60          10-

          i  I   i   I   i   i                      i       I   i  i   i    i            i












      71  73 75       79  81 83  85              71 73 75 77 79  81  83  85
                  YEAR                                       YEAR













FIGURE 2-6 Mass emissions from seven large municipal sewage treatment plants dis-     
charging to the Southern California Bight, 1971 through 1985. SOURCE: SCCWRI?,        
1986a.



that growth of phytoplankton communities will be stimulated in the imme-I
diate vicinity of sewage and refinery outfalls. if the waste water is allowed 
to mix into the near-surface euphotic zone. However, the likelihood of this 
occurring depends on the location of the outfall. For example, municipal 
wastewater outfalls discharge at approximately 197-ft depth, well below thel
thermocline, Refinery outfalls, in contrast, discharge into surface waters.
Santa Monica Bay and other coastal waters of the bight have experienced
several episodes of elevated ammonia concentrations and blooms of phyto-
plankton, possibly enhanced by wastewater discharges. Because the blooms 
   1400 -                 UZinc
            '~/  "~      ï¿½~~~ Chromium
   1200 - I*


            1000                          ~~~~~~~~~~20,000tï¿½ï¿½ï¿½
                                                                 ï¿½ PcB
 i-800 -                                    18,000

   600o-    Asi                            12,000- ,


   400 -          ~-"~                      8,000 -'.,,

   200u-                  ~'..              4,000-,


      71  73  75  77  79  81  83  85             71  73  75  77  79  81  83  85
                   YEAR                                      YEAR

FIGURE 2-6 Mass emissions from seven large municipal sewage treatment plants dis-
charging to the Southern California Bight, 1971 through 1985. SOURCE: SCCWRP,
1986a.



that growth of phytoplankton communities will be stimulated in the imme-
diate vicinity of sewage and refinery outfalls if the waste water is allowed
to mix into the near-surface euphotic zone. However, the likelihood of this
occurring depends on the location of the outfall. For example, municipal
wastewater outfalls discharge at approximately 197-ft depth, well below the
thermocline. Refinery outfalls, in contrast, discharge into surface waters.
Santa Monica Bay and other coastal waters of the bight have experienced
several episodes of elevated ammonia concentrations and blooms of phyto-
plankton, possibly enhanced by wastewater discharges. Because the blooms





                                   31

are quite rare and wastewater discharges are continuous, it appears that
factors other than these discharges play a more important role in causing
blooms.
    Dairy wastes, irrigation tailwaters, and urban lawn fertilizers in runoff
can contribute to eutrophication in coastal estuaries and lagoons. High
concentrations of nitrate in runoff water have been implicated in blooms of
nuisance algae in Newport Bay (Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control
Board, 1987).


                             Trace Metals
    There have been several attempts to estimate the fluxes of metals to
the Southern California Bight from different sources. In studies performed
in the 1970s, municipal waste water was found to be the major source of
several metals (Table 2-2). In contrast, most of the lead entering the bight
came from dry fallout from the atmosphere and stormwater runoff from
land, derived primarily from combustion of leaded gasoline in automobiles.
Garber (1987) found that from 1967 through 1982 the amounts of lead
and mercury entering Santa Monica Bay in stormwater runoff were 40
and 52 percent, respectively, of the amounts entering the bay in municipal
wastewater discharges. Garber also confirmed earlier conclusions that
wastewater discharges were the major source of all other metals entering
the bay. Dry or wet deposition of metal from brushfire smoke may be an
additional source of metals in coastal waters (Young and Jan, 1977).
    In the past 15 years, municipal sewage treatment plants have under-
taken source control programs, enforced stringent pretreatment programs,
and adopted procedures (including secondary treatment) that reduce the
particulate emissions with which most metals are associated. As a result,
the concentrations and mass emission rates of most metals have decreased
dramatically in recent years (Figure 2-6). Mass emissions of several metals
in sewage have decreased five- to sixfold between 1971 and 1985 (SCCWRP,
1986a). One exception is silver, for which the mass emission rate has in-
creased from 17.7 metric tons in 1971 to 27 metric tons in 1985 (SCCWRP,
1986a).
    The history of metal inputs to the bight from all sources is neatly
recorded in layered sediments in its basins. They reveal that inputs in-
creased annually through the late 1960s, then began decreasing, probably
due to decreases in mass emissions of metals in sewage (Bruland et al.,
1974).


                     Synthetic Organic Chemicals
    Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and the pesticide DDT have been





                                    32

TABLE 2-3 Estimated Annual Emissions (Kilograms/Year) of Selected Chlorinated
Hydrocarbons to the Southern California Bight from Different Sources

Source                   Year           Total DDT  Dieldrin         Total PCBs

Municipal waste water    1972             6,490       100            - 19,460
                        1973            3,920      < 280             3,410
                         1974            1,580        95              5,290
                         1975            1,270        ---             3,080
                         1976             940         ---             2,810
                         1977             770         ---             1,560
Harbor/industrial        1973-74            40         10              S 100
Antifouling paint        1973              < 1         ---               < 1
Surface runoff           1971-72           100         20            190-280
                         1972-73          320         65            250-830
Aerial falloutb          1973-74          1,400        ---             1,100
Ocean currents            1973          <7,000         ---           < 4,000

aValues are lower than those in SCCWRP (1986) because fewer treatment
plants were considered.
Includes only the inner, nearshore zone of the bight (400 x 50 kin).

SOURCE: Young and Heesen, 1978; Young et al., 1981.


monitored extensively in the bight ecosystem since the early 1970s. At that
time, municipal waste water was the principal source of these contaminants
(Table 2-3), with additional inputs from aerial fallout and surface runoff
from land (Young et al., 1976). Garber (1987) reported that between 1967
and 1982, stormwater runoff contributed 7 percent of the total identifiable
chlorinated hydrocarbons contributed by municipal waste water to Santa
Monica Bay. The DDT came from a local manufacturer, which discharged
its wastes into the Los Angeles County sewer system from 1947 to 1971
(Chartrand et al., 1985), and other pesticides and PCBs came from a variety
of sources. Analysis of dated sediment cores from the Santa Barbara Basin
revealed that deposition (and therefore discharge) of PCBs to the bight
began about 1945 and deposition of DDT began about 1952 (Hom et al.,
1974).
     Gradients of DDT and its breakdown products in coastal mussels and
sediments clearly point to the Los Angeles County outfalls as the major
source of DDT (Figure 2-7). Body burdens of DDT in commercial fish
also are highest off the Los Angeles metropolitan area and decline steadily
from Southern California to Alaska, with slight elevations in fish from
San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound (Malins et al., 1987; McCain et al.,
1988). Among west coast mussels sampled in the NOAA National Status
and Trends Program, those from the Los Angeles area had the highest
body burdens of DDT (Matta et al., 1985; Boehm et al., 1988). In 1987,
mussels from San Diego Bay contained the highest mean concentrations
of PCBs along the west coast (2.1 ppm). Mussels from the Los Angeles





                                  33

area contained a mean of 0.72 ppm PCBs (Boehm et al., 1988). Mussels
in the San Diego area have contained elevated concentrations of PCBs
since at least 1976 (Farrington, 1983). The source of this contamination is
uncertain.
    In the 1970s, manufacture and use of DDT and PCBs in the United
States were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and
since that time emissions of these highly toxic contaminants to the U.S.
environment have declined dramatically. With cessation of discharges of
DDT to the Los Angeles County sewage treatment plant in 1971, emis-
sions of DDT from the seven largest municipal wastewater plants dropped
dramatically, from 21.7 metric tons in 1971 to 6.6 metric tons in 1972
(SCCWRP, 1986a). Emissions of DDT continued to drop each year and
were about 58 kg in 1985. Discharges of PCBs reached a peak of 9.8 metric
tons in 1972 and have declined gradually to 0.82 metric tons in 1985. This
decline is reflected in the sediments of the anoxic Santa Barbara Basin
(Hom et al., 1974).
    By 1970, the California brown pelican had been driven almost to ex-
tinction in U.S. waters from eating DDT- and PCB-contaminated anchovies
(Chartrand et al., 1985). Although still on the endangered species list, the
bird has made a significant comeback in the 16 years since DDT was banned
(Schreiber, 1980).
    Much less attention has been paid to fluxes of other synthetic organic
chemicals. There is evidence that several other pesticides are important
contaminants in municipal waste and storm waters. The state mussel
watch program has identified several hot spots of dieldrin, chlordane,
and toxaphene in shallow coastal waters and bays. The pesticides aldrin,
heptachlor, and heptachlor epoxide were found in tissues of mussels from
coastal regions of northern Baja California (Gutierrez-Galindo et al., 1983),
but not in mussels collected by the California Mussel Watch Program along
the U.S. coast of the bight (Ladd et al., 1984). A possible source of these

Buenos Creek.
    Priority pollutant scans of sewage of the effluent in the monitoring
programs of the major municipal dischargers have revealed a wide variety
of chlorinated solvents and other synthetic organic chemicals. No attempts
have been made to date to estimate the fluxes of these chemicals to the
bight from different sources.


                            Ocean Dumping
    Fourteen ocean dump sites designated for disposal of a wide variety
of waste materials operated for various lengths of time between 1931 and
1973 in the Southern California Bight (Figure 2-8; Chartrand et al., 1985).






                                  34







    20,000                                   -                                  -"

    10,000 -




   300,000 -

    200,000 -  COD

    100,000 -

         0
      1,000 -

             ~> ~~~~~ 100 -                       n           COPPER

 0r,   10-

        1.0
      1,000-
                                                    ZINC

       100/


        10
       100 -
        10 -
                                                    TOTAL DDT
        1.0- -

        0.1

        10 -


        0.01- _--TOTAL
        0.1 -


      0.001

FIGURE 2-7  Variations in concentrations of six materials in surficial sediments from 77
stations along the 60-m isobath during spring and summer, 1978. The large peak is centered
around the Palos Verdes discharge. Secondary peaks for some parameters are centered
around the other major discharges. The major source of DDT is the Palos Verdes outfalls.
SOURCE: Word and Mearns, 1979.





                                 35

Between 1947 and 1961, the California Salvage Company dumped a variety
of liquid industrial wastes, including approximately 2,000 to 3,000 gal/day
of an acid sludge containing DDT from Montrose Chemical Company, at
Dump Site No. 1 located about 10 nautical miles north of Santa Catalina
Island. In 1961, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board
began regulating ocean dumping off Los Angeles County and legal ocean
dumping of DDT ceased. All legal ocean dumping at this site ceased in
1973. Chartrand et al. (1985) cite instances of illegal dumping of DDT-
contaminated wastes off Palos Verdes in the 1970s.
    Since 1977, four open-ocean locations have been designated by the
EPA for use by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) as interim
disposal sites for dredged materials (P. Cotton, U.S. EPA Region IX,
personal communication; 40 CFR 228 12A). Dump site LA-1 is off Port
Hueneme, LA-2 is off Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors, LA-3 is off
Newport Beach, and LA-5 is off Point Loma. Approximately 2 and 3 million
yd3 of dredged material from Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors and
San Diego Harbor have been dumped at the LA-2 and LA-5 dump sites,
respectively. This dredged material probably was contaminated with a wide
variety of chemicals, but no monitoring is being performed to determine if
chemicals are being leached from it.
    EPA recently designated an ocean disposal site for oil well drilling
muds and drill cuttings. The site is about 16 nautical miles from Long
Beach Harbor and is near the center of the San Pedro Basin. It has been
used by the THUMS Long Beach Company for disposal of drilling muds
and cuttings generated during drilling from four islands in Long Beach
Harbor.




           OVERVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS


    Contaminant input, resource exploitation, and habitat modifications
due to construction and other economic activity have led to a suite of
environmental problems in the Southern California Bight. Some of them
are regionwide, while others are relatively localized. It is beyond the scope
of this case study to present a detailed review of all environmental problems,
however, awareness of their diversity is important to understanding the
monitoring programs described and analyzed in Chapters 4 through 6. The
following sections therefore present a brief listing of major environmental
problems in the bight, and describe two of them in more detail: DDT
contamination and the transport of sewage contamination from Mexico
into U.S. waters.






                                       36


           I;                                  I        I        I        I

                                 i=.  SAN LUIS OBISPO
      Refinery and  1  1947-73
      chemical wastes   2  1965-71 POINT CONCEPTION
                   3  1946-71 
                   4  1947.71 
                       "4 1947    .-71 -SAN BUENAVENTURA
                       7 1960-67
      Flter cake  8   1969-70
349                                   ott k7                 SANTA MONICA         -
      Oil well drilling         \
      wastes       2   1969-70  \                   ' e 

      Refuse and garbage 4  1931-71  \                           NEWPORT BEACH
                   5  1944-70     \  
      -           ~~  ~~~9 1947-68     \s
                                        \    12E ï¿½   
                   -   9  1947-88 M           12- a{                 SAN DIEGO
                  13  1931-72                                       S
      Radioactive wastes    10  1946-68  \             .              US.
                   14  19456-8                13            7,    MEI
      Military explosives  6  1945-70
32  -              11    1945-70                                         ,ENSENADA
                   12  1945-70              \
                                             %
                                                  N' \             S;%,, CABO
                          I                      ~~~~~4I  - -  ---     - -  COLNETT

                                                                           SAN
                                                                          OUINTIN
           0      50     100
   ~30, _-   STATUTE MILES
           I            I                      I I               I 
 1240              122     0         120ï¿½               18 116ï¿½

FIGURE 2-8  Ocean dump sites designated and used between 1947 and 1973. The THUMS
dump site is near position 2. SOURCE: Chartrand et al., 1985.






                       Bightwide Environmental Issues

     Many environmental problems from both human activity and natural
processes in the bight extend throughout the entire bight or are extensive
enough that they cross regulatory and legal boundaries. They include:

     *  impacts on fish and shellfish populations from commercial and
sport fishing;

     *  impacts on fish populations from entrainment of larvae and im-
pingement of adults by coastal power plants;
     * large changes in fish populations (e.g., sardines) resulting from in-
completely understood interactions between natural environmental changes
and fishing activity;
     * impacts on individual fish species from loss of nursery habitat due
to construction and dredging;
     * large changes in the areal extent of kelp beds resulting from natural
environmental changes and contamination;





                                  37

    ï¿½  regional changes in plankton populations due to nutrient enrich-
ment by waste water;
    * regional contamination of sediments and biota resulting from toxics
in waste water, storm drain, and nonpoint source inflows;
    * regional contamination of water resulting from pathogens in waste
water, storm drain, and nonpoint source inflows; and
    * cumulative effects that derive from the combination of regional and
local impacts on specific resources.


    DDT Contamination

    One regional problem has attracted international attention. In 1967,
high concentrations of DDT were reported in fish from California coastal
waters (Risebrough et al., 1967). By 1970, it was known that the Montrose
Chemical Company was disposing of large amounts of DDT via the Los
Angeles County ocean sewage outfalls off Palos Verdes and by ocean
dumping. During the next decade, numerous surveys documented the
occurrence of the pesticide throughout the bight, south to Baja California,
and far up coast to the north in many species of marine animals, including
sea birds, seals, sea lions, and porpoises. Retrospective analyses of museum
fish and dated sediment samples revealed that regionwide contamination
began as early as 1950 (Chartrand et al., 1985). Until it was banned in
the United States in the early 1970s, large amounts of DDT were used
for agricultural and insect control. Some of the DDT reached the bight in
aerial fallout, runoff from land, and municipal sewage (Young et al., 1976).
    DDT continues to be used in Baja California and some of it continues
to reach the bight in stormwater runoff. In recent years, large concentra-
tions of DDT in mussels from Newport Bay have been reported (Santa Ana
Regional Water Quality Control Board, 1985). These increased concentra-
tions may be derived from agricultural soils being plowed or cleared for
subdivision development and contaminating stormwater runoff. During the
last decade, DDT emissions have been reduced a thousandfold (Figure 2-9)
and contamination of intertidal organisms and fishes has declined (Matta et
al., 1986). The widespread contamination that resulted from the combina-
tion of a large point source and many nonpoint source inputs dramatically
illustrates the potential for localized problems to become regional problems
over time.


    US.-Mexico Sewage Contamination
    The headwaters and mouth of the Tijuana River are in the United
States, although 70 percent of its stream bed and drainage basin lie in





                                  38

the Mexican state of Baja California (Figure 2-10). The river has been
used for disposal of raw sewage since the 1920s, and rapid population
growth in the Tijuana area after World War II led to the quarantine of
Imperial Beach (San Diego County) in 1959. The quarantine was lifted
in 1962 after Tijuana completed its sewage system, but was reimposed in
1965 as the system failed repeatedly. As a stop-gap, an emergency pipeline
was constructed to carry up to 13 million gal/day of sewage to the San
Diego metropolitan system. By 1980, this pipeline was continuously at full
capacity. Because of population pressures on both sides of the border, the
pipeline agreement is currently being renewed on a year-to-year basis.
    By the early 1980s, overflows, leakage, and failures at the Playas de
Tijuana Treatment Plant and at other points in the sewer system led to
multiple discharges of raw sewage (Figure 2-10)(Hickey, 1986), including
the discharge of 1 million gal/day of raw sewage directly to the ocean less
than 1 mile south of the Mexican border. In addition, raw sewage from
some of the approximately 50 percent of Tijuana's population that is not
sewered flows down open channels into the Tijuana River drainage. As a
result, Border Field State Park and beaches as far north as Imperial Beach
have remained under quarantine.
    The regional contamination resulting from uncontrolled sewage flows
from Tijuana provides a clear example of how environmental problems can
cross regulatory and legal boundaries. As a result, in 1980 the San Diego
County Department of Health Services, in cooperation with the San Diego
Regional Water Quality Control Board and the U.S. State Department's
International Boundary Commission, an agency formed by the U.S. and
Mexican governments to deal with trans-border issues, implemented a mon-
itoring program to determine the influence of Mexican sewage discharge
on beaches in the border zone.


                     Local Environmental Problems
    Many environmental problems in the bight are local; they are restricted
to an area or time surrounding a specific identifiable disturbance or con-
tamination source. Because they are easier to identify and monitor, these
localized impacts are more completely understood than bightwide impacts.
Localized impacts include:

     * changes in benthic infauna around wastewater outfalls;
     *  changes in the makeup of fish communities around wastewater
outfalls resulting from alterations in their food supply;
     * contamination of sediments and biota in the immediate vicinity of
wastewater outfalls;





                                  39

      0.850 -
      0.756 -
  0     '     --
    00.472 -
  L           -
  z
  Z   0.283 -
  0
  I           -,
     0.189  -

      0.000 ----I -- ------I-,
         1920       1930      1940        1950      1960      1970      1980
                                    YEAR

       100 - 

   a    80-                                   I' i.jV
  r)
  o  0
  II     60-                                      i 
  z          -                            .I 
  0 40 -                                !x*
  Z          _o                          IV
  1--         - ï¿½
        20-                         j

         0
         0            I          I         : '                   '  '" "I
         1920      1930       1940       1950       1960      1970      1980
                                    YEAR

      0.380 -
            _                                     tP..'.,
   0.285-

  z   0.190-
  o - i,, 1/ . 
  I/)         -
  0
     0.095 . .-.

      0.000
          1920      1930       1940       1950      1960       1970      1980
                                    YEAR
FIGURE 2-9 Total (-), nonpoint (-.-), and point source (...) estimated yearly input of
DDT to the Southern California Bight from (a) Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, (b)
Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, and (c) San Diego County.
SOURCE: Summers et al., 1987.






                                   40





          IMPERIAL BEACH
                                           Tijuana River
         0                       Stewart's Drain
                              Canyon deol
                    Smugglers Gulch




                           I ~~~~~TIJUANA
             Payas de Tiuana
            ï¿½



PACIFIC OCEA


                       EXISTING SEWER
                       SYSTEM DISCHARGE

FIGURE 2-10 Locations where raw or partially treated sewage enters U.S. territory from
Baja California, Mexico. SOURCE: Hickey, 1986.




    * potential effects on kelp beds from the White Point and Point
Loma wastewater outfalls and SONGS;
    * effects on fish communities from heated power plant effluent;
    * contamination of nearshore water in the immediate vicinity of storm
drains;
    * impacts on benthic communities from disposal of dredged material;
and
    * impacts on plankton populations resulting from SONGS' effects on
nearshore circulation patterns.


                               SUMMARY

    The sources of pollution in the Southern California Bight are quite
varied and typical of those found in any highly urbanized coastal area of
the United States, except that there are no major riverine inputs. Some
of these sources are among the largest (sewage treatment plants) or most
extensive (oil production) of their type found anywhere. The range of




                                             41
          contaminants discharged is broad, and in some cases the volumes have
          been among the largest found in the country (for example, the historic
          DDT discharges through the Los Angeles County sewage treatment plant).
          In recent years, as a result of control strategies or changed production
          practices, the amounts of many contaminants discharged have declined
          dramatically. These reductions have resulted in decreased concentrations
          in the marine environment.
              This great variety in sources and types of pollutants poses a formidable
          challenge for society as it seeks to impose appropriate controls on discharges
          to the marine environment. The statutory and regulatory system responsible
          for achieving these reductions is discussed in Chapter 3. In addition, the
         complexity of sources and pollutants has resulted in a set of intensive
I'        ~~monitoring programs in the Southern California Bight, which are discussed
          in detail in Chapter 4.







                                 3
            Regulatory Framework and
                     Public Concerns














    As public concerns over the condition of the nation's environment grew
during the 1970s and 1980s, statutes were enacted to address them. This
chapter discusses the major federal, California state, and international laws
that address water quality and related issues, and the agencies responsible
for implementing them. Many of the decisions made by these agencies in
the context of the statutory requirements are based, in part, on information
derived from the monitoring system in the Southern California Bight.4
    Public concern over water quality has not abated, and in many ways
has grown sharper in recent years. Hearings held in 1988 on the California
ocean plan provided a forum for restating these concerns as they relate to
monitoring and are therefore summarized in this chapter.

                      REGULATORY SECTOR
    State and federal agencies have regulatory authority over three types
of environmental issues in the Southern California Bight:
    1. water quality control,
    2. public health and safety, and
    3. natural resources protection and management.

                        Marine Water Quality
    The two major federal laws that regulate marine water quality are
the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 and 1987

                                 42





                                   43

(the Clean Water Act, as amended, or CWA), and the Marine Protection,
Research and Sanctuaries Act (MPRSA) of 1972. The CWA regulates all
discharges into navigable waters of the United States, from fresh waters
through the estuaries, the territorial sea (0 to 3 nautical miles-hereafter
called the 3-mi limit), the contiguous zone (3 to 12 nautical miles), and
beyond (Figure 3-1). It covers pipeline discharges to estuaries, the terri-
torial sea, and federal waters beyond the 3-mi limit. It also covers runoff
from land and dumping of wastes (primarily dredged material) from vessels
into estuaries. The MPRSA regulates the transportation and dumping of
wastes in marine waters from the mean low-water line of the open coast
to the outer limit of federal jurisdiction. Thus, the CWA covers pipeline
discharges from coastal sewage treatment plants, electric power plants, and
commercial and industrial operations to fresh and marine waters, as well as
discharges from oil platforms in state and federal waters. The MPRSA cov-
ers any dumping of materials from barges or ships into the ocean, including
incineration of hazardous wastes at sea.
    An important difference between the two laws is that the CWA is
a water pollution abatement law and as such is not required to consider
effects on the air and land of abatement actions for water. MPRSA on
the other hand requires evaluation and assessment of all potential water,
air, and land impacts before an action (e.g., dump site designation) can be
taken. Thus, pipeline discharge of sewage sludge is illegal under CWA.
    The primary purpose of the CWA is to restore and maintain the
chemical, physical, and biological integrity of U.S. water resources (Office
of Tchnology Assessment [OTA], 1987). This was to be accomplished by a
federal grant and loan program to help municipalities to build or upgrade
sewage treatment plants and by pollution control programs with regulatory
requirements for industrial and municipal discharges.
    The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the federal agency
that administers the CWA. In the state of California, the pollution control
provisions of the CWA are administered by the California State Water
Resources Control Board and the regional water quality control boards
under authority of the Porter Cologne Act (Water Code Sections 13000 et
seq.).
    Section 402 of the CWA authorizes the EPA to establish and adminis-
ter the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit
program. All municipal and industrial facilities discharging directly into
navigable waters are required to obtain a NPDES permit. Pollution con-
trol is implemented primarily by "end of the pipe" (effluent) limitations
on specific conventional chemicals that may be present in the discharge.
These limitations are based primarily on considerations of current available
technology (technology-based limits). Recently, there has been a growing
emphasis on basing permit limitations on consideration of the quality and





                                     44

                                   Coastal Waters ;   Open Ocean
                                     Baseline to 3     3 to 12 nautical miles
                                     nautical miles     (contiguous zone)
  River  (territorial sea) j                              and beyond
                          Runoff  '  >                                                  i

                                       Platform    j    Platform Discharges
                                      Discharges


                          Sewage        ,
                          t eatmentei
       Estuary             plant       4       i,                            


                                 ---'a--'  ,Sewage             Sewage sludge
                                        pipelines
           Dredged material
              disposal
                                         Industrial
                                         pipelines                 MPRSA


     Runoff                                 [ .               Industrial waste
                         Industrial                               dumping
                           plant




                                       Dredged                    Dredged
                                       material                  material

FIGURE 3.1 Jurisdictional boundaries of environmental laws affecting marine disposal.
SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment, 1987.


uses of the receiving waters (water quality-based limits). Dischargers are
required to report periodically on compliance with technology-based limits.
In addition, if water quality-based limits are included in the permit and the
discharge is to state waters, a monitoring program is required to ensure
that water quality standards and requirements are met.
    EPA issues permits for discharges outside state waters (beyond the 3-
mi limit) and reviews NPDES permits issued by the regional water quality
control boards. EPA is also the primary permitting authority for special
permits identified by the CWA, such as section 301(h), which authorizes
waivers from secondary treatment of effluent discharged into marine waters
if water quality objectives to protect the marine environment can be met.



                                                                                           Id 





                                            45

             In the bight, the CWA is administered through the State Water Re-
         sources Control Board by four regional boards: Central Coast (Region 3),
         Los Angeles (Region 4), Santa Ana (Region 8), and San Diego (Region 9).
         The regional boards have primary responsibility for:
               *developing and adopting waste discharge requirements (limits on
         the discharge of wastes to state waters),
             * administering monitoring programs (used to determine compliance
         with permit requirements), and
               edeveloping and adopting water quality control plans (basin plans)
         within their respective regions.
             The state board determines state policy for water quality control and
         reviews the basin plans developed by the regional boards to ensure that they
         are consistent with state policy. The state board may also adopt statewide
         water quality control plans or policies, which supersede the regional basin
         plans if there is a conflict. Statewide plans and policies dealing with
I        ~~estuarine, coastal, and marine waters of California are:
             * the California ocean plan (Water Quality Control Plan for Ocean
         Waters of California [State Water Resources Control Board, 19831),
             * the California thermal plan (Water Quality Control Plan for Control
         of 'lbmiperature in the Coastal and Interstate Waters and Enclosed Bays
         and Estuaries of California [State Water Resources Control Board, 1975]),
         and
             a the enclosed bays and estuaries policy (Water Quality Control Policy
         for the Enclosed Bays and Estuaries of California [State Water Resources
         Control Board, 1974]).
 41   ~~~    Statewide and regional water quality control plans designate:
             o beneficial uses to be protected,
             a water quality objectives (limits or levels of water quality constituents
         for beneficial use protection), and
               *implementation of a program for achieving water quality objectives
         (waste discharge requirements).
             The designation of beneficial uses and water quality objectives consti-
         tute water quality standards for California. Waste discharge requirements
         are derived from the relevant basin or statewide plan.
             The California ocean plan sets the scope for most of the discharge-
         related marine monitoring programs in the bight. The plan has been
         reviewed three times (1978, 1983, and 1987) and amended twice (1978
         and 1983). Additional amendments were proposed in 1988 (State Water
         Resources Control Board, 1988). These amendments, as well as those
         to the CWA in 1977, 1981, and 1987 resulted in increased monitoring
         requirements for dischargers.





                                  46

    The regulatory process and the public are linked by the regional boards,
which deal with regional and local regulatory issues. Board members are
local residents and the staff deals directly with local governments, agencies,
and dischargers. The boards hold hearings for discharge permits, and the
staff (and, when appropriate, EPA-e.g., NPDES permits for discharges into
federal waters) develop ocean monitoring programs, interpret monitoring
results with respect to permit compliance, and inform the public.
    The MPRSA, which regulates transportation of materials to be dumped
in the ocean or incinerated at sea, authorizes EPA to designate and manage
ocean dumping and incineration sites. EPA also evaluates ocean dumping
criteria for all permits and issues permits for ocean disposal of materials
other than dredged material. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE), 
under Title I, Section 103, administers the permit program for disposal of
dredged material at ocean sites designated by EPA. However, EPA does
have the authority to review applications for dredged material disposal
permits. Both agencies must determine that the proposed dumping will
not unreasonably endanger human health or the marine environment ac-
cording to the ocean dumping criteria, and that ocean disposal is the best
environmental option.
    Section 404 of the CWA regulates discharge of dredged or fill material
within the 3-mi limit and in estuaries and wetlands (Figure 3-1). The COE
regulates such discharges, using guidelines they developed jointly with EPA
(Office of Tchnology Assessment, 1987). Under Section 401 of the CWA,
such discharges must be certified by the affected state as complying with
applicable water quality criteria. In the event of a conflict between the
state and COE, or outside of COE jurisdiction, the regional boards have
independent authority under the California Water Code to regulate such
discharges.
    Under Title I, Section 107, of the MPRSA, the U.S. Coast Guard is
responsible for surveillance and enforcement to prevent unlawful dumping
of prohibited material, dumping outside designated ocean dump sites, and
illegal transportation of material for dumping. Title I expressly prohibits
the disposal of high-level radioactive wastes and chemical and biological
warfare agents. Certain other materials are allowed only under certain
circumstances.
    Title II requires EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) to conduct research and monitoring to assess the
environmental impacts of waste disposal.
    Title III of MPRSA gives NOAA the authority to establish marine
sanctuaries. Inland waters and marine areas as far offshore as the edge
of the continental shelf can be designated as marine sanctuaries if such
designation is determined necessary to preserve or restore the area for
conservation, recreational, ecological, or aesthetic purposes. The Channel





                                  47

Islands National Marine Sanctuary, located in the bight, is an example.
TWo international conventions address ocean dumping. The first is the
London Dumping Convention (LDC), which was negotiated in 1972 and
became effective in 1975. It requires that all signatory nations adopt marine
disposal criteria that, at a minimum, are equivalent to and contain the basic
constraints of those in the LDC. The United States, Mexico, and 59 other
countries have ratified the LDC. In 1974, the MPRSA was amended so
that all U.S. marine disposal criteria would be consistent with and contain
all the basic constraints set forth in the LDC.
    The second agreement, the International Convention for the Pre-
vention of Pollution from Ships (1973 and protocols of 1978, known as
MARPOL 73/78) regulates discharges from ships. Annex 1 (covering dis-
charges of oil) and Annex 2 (covering discharges of bulk chemicals) have
been ratified by the required number of nations and are in effect. Annex
3 (covering sewage discharges), Annex 4 (covering hazardous substances
in packaged form), and Annex 5 (covering garbage) await approval. The
U.S. Senate recently enacted the Marine Plastic Pollution Research and
Control Act of 1987 (P.L. 100-200, Title II, Sections 2001 to 2305), which
includes provisions of Annex 5 of MARPOL 73/78 and prohibits ships from
dumping plastics anywhere in the ocean and from discharging garbage to
the ocean within 12 mi of shore, including the bight. Ports will be required
to provide garbage disposal facilities for ships, and ship captains will be
required to keep a waste management log, which must be available to port
officials.


                       Public Health and Safety
    State and federal agencies with primary responsibility for public health
and safety within the bight's waters and along its shores are the California
State Department of Health Services (DHS), the county and municipal
public health agencies, and the federal Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). The California Health and Safety Code and the California Admin-
istrative Code authorize the DHS to supervise sanitation, healthfulness,
and safety of public beaches and public water-contact sports areas. The
main focus of DHS monitoring activities is marine recreational areas from
the beach out to a depth of 30 ft or 1,000 ft from shore, whichever is
farther (the surf zone), and coastal kelp beds. DHS has been relying on
bacteriological standards developed in 1942 (total and fecal coliforms) to
judge the safety of water bodies (California Department of Public Health,
1943). When standards are exceeded, DHS or local health officials may
post warning signs or declare beach closures. Permanent warning signs
have been posted in the vicinity of major storm drain outlets into Santa
Monica Bay and near the U.S-Mexican border. Upper Newport Bay has





                                   48

been closed to water-contact sports since 1974 (Santa Ana Regional Water
Quality Control Board, 1985).
    Under present laws and regulations, DHS can close fishing and shell-
fishing areas because of bacterial contamination and the presence of par-
alytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) organisms in marine animals. Since 1978,
upper Newport Bay has been closed to shellfish gathering for human con-
sumption because of bacterial contamination from the bay drainage area
(Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, 1985). A commercial
shellfish growing operation in Agua Hedionda Lagoon in San Diego County
is required by its state permit to cease harvesting for seven days after rain in
excess of 0.25 inches due to bacterial contamination from the lagoon water-
shed (California Department of Health Services, April 7, 1988). The DHS
has maintained that elevated fecal coliform levels in coastal waters and in
shellfish meats at a mariculture operation in the Santa Barbara Channel
have resulted from the intermittent impact of undisinfected sewage effluent
from both the Goleta and Santa Barbara wastewater treatment plants. In
1987, the Goleta plant initiated disinfection of its effluent prior to discharge
(California Department of Health Services, 1988b, letter to Pacific Seafood
Industries).
    There is no specific authorization under current law to close fishing
and shellfishing areas due to chemical contamination. Until recently, there
was no systematic sampling of edible tissues of fisheries products from the
bight to evaluate potential effects on human health from chemical con-
tamination. However, the DHS recently issued a health advisory warning
against consumption of white croaker from the Santa Monica Bay, Palos
Verdes Peninsula, and Los Angeles Harbor areas because of heavy DDT
and PCB contamination.
    The DHS is also overseeing a year-long assessment of chemical con-
tamination of recreational and commercial fish sampled from 25 areas in
the bight. More recently, experimental quantitative risk assessment meth-
ods have been used to evaluate suspected or potential human carcinogens
in fishery products. Such methods may lead to estimates of health risks
from levels of contamination well below current FDA action limits.
    Monitoring for coliform or other enteric bacteria is also a part of all
monitoring programs administered by the regional water quality control
boards and EPA around municipal wastewater outfalls.  This bacterial
monitoring is intended to track the wastewater plume and evaluate possible
hazards to the water contact recreation shorelines.


             Natural Resource Protection and Management

    Several state and federal resource agencies are involved in protecting
and managing the natural resources of the Southern California Bight. The





                                   49

California Department of Fish and Game, the National Marine Fisheries
Service (NMFS) of NOAA, and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) of
the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) are all involved in protecting
and managing living marine resources. Their activities include fish stock
assessments and habitat protection. The State Lands Commission is re-
sponsible for leasing tidal and submerged lands out to the 3-mi limit for
energy and mineral development, subject to the Public Trust Doctrine. The
California Department of Fish and Game and the Department of Health
Services issue permits for commercial shellfish growing, subject to review
by the State Lands Commission. The DOI's Minerals Management Service
(MMS) is responsible under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953
(OCSLA) for leasing energy and mineral rights in federal waters extending
from the 3-mi limit to the outer limit (200 mi) of the Exclusive Economic
Zone (EEZ).
    Resource exploitation, management, and protection activities must
comply with several federal regulations in addition to those dealing with
water quality. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA)
requires that an environmental impact statement (EIS) be prepared for all
proposed legislation and all major federal actions that could significantly
affect the quality of the environment. Thus, the MMS prepares an EIS
before leasing offshore tracts for oil and gas exploration. Although EPA
is not required to prepare an EIS for ocean disposal site designations, its
policy is to do so voluntarily for dump site and incineration site designations.
EPA also prepared an EIS in 1977 when it proposed revisions to the ocean
dumping regulations and criteria.
    The Endangered Species Act of 1973 requires all federal and state
agencies to ensure that any action they authorize, fund, or carry out will
not jeopardize the existence of an endangered or threatened species or
result in damage or destruction of critical habitat for such species. The act
authorizes the NMFS and FWS to render a biological opinion about the
potential effect of a proposed activity on endangered species. As part of
the EIS process, one of these agencies, usually upon consultation with the
California Department of Fish and Game, must attest that the proposed
action is compatible with the Endangered Species Act.
    The NMFS and FWS are empowered by the Marine Mammal Protec-
tion Act of 1972 to enforce a moratorium on the taking or importation of
marine mammals and marine mammal products except by special permit
from the Secretary of Commerce. The National Historic Preservation Act
protects historic and prehistoric archaeological resources.
    The Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 (CZMA) administered
by NOAA provides grants to coastal states to develop coastal management
plans. It also provides for state review of federal actions, including leasing
of tracts for oil development and designation of ocean dump sites in federal





                                  50

waters that might directly affect the coastal zone. Although the State Water
Resources Control Board has primary authority to regulate water quality,
the California Coastal Commission is responsible for reviewing federal
actions for consistency with the state's coastal management plan. In this
role, the commission has had a major influence on proposed oil and gas
development activities on California's outer continental shelf.
    Under the CZMTA National Estuarine Reserve Research Program, the
Secretary of Commerce may designate a state or estuary as a national
reserve upon nomination for such designation by the state's governor. The
Tijuana Estuary is the first estuary in the Southern California Bight to
receive such status.
    The California Coastal Commission controls development within the
coastal zone by issuing permits and approving local development plans in
accordance with the California Coastal Act of 1976. The California Coastal
Conservancy is authorized to make grants to local governments to acquire
and restore critical habitats, including coastal wetlands.

                   INTERAGENCY COOPERATION
    Complex environmental problems may not fall neatly within the areas
of responsibility of individual agencies. They may involve the responsibili-
ties of several agencies, or none, and may cross jurisdictional boundaries.
In delegating responsibility for regulatory activities in the bight to different
state and federal agencies, the U.S. Congress and the state legislature have
not always been able to anticipate such problems. As a result, agencies
must deal with policy conflicts, gaps, and overlaps. In addition, monitoring
and research results generated by one agency can relate to the statutory
responsibility of another. There are several examples in the bight of inter-
agency cooperation that has successfully resolved such conflicts, and a few
are mentioned below.
    The previous chapter described how the San Diego County Depart-
ment of Public Health, the Sadl Diego Regional Water Quality Control
Board, and the U.S. State Department's International Boundary Commis- 
sion cooperated on the design of a monitoring program to assess sewage
contamination from Tijuana. In addition, the EP~s Region IX office co-
operates with the U.S. Army COE and with the Regional Water Quality
Control Boards in establishing discharge and disposal limitations and mon-
itoring programs.
    The California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation (CalCOFI)
program is a long-standing example of a joint monitoring and research
program involving federal and state resource agencies and an academic
institution. The State Water Resources Control Board and the California
Department of Fish and Game have combined resources to establish a







statewide Mussel Watch Program to monitor toxic contamination. This
program complements NOA~s National Status and Rlends Program. The
NOAA Sea Grant programs (which receive matching funds from the state
of California), the U.S. FWS, the Coastal Conservancy, and the Califor-
nia Department of Fish and Game have cooperated in coastal wetland
restoration projects.
    Responding to mounting public concern over the condition of Santa
Monica Bay, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG),
funded the Santa Monica Bay Study. The study's goal was to compile all
data relevant to the bay, perform an overall assessment of the state of
its marine environment, and develop an implementation plan for specific
actions to improve it. The study's steering committee is a consortium
of representatives from local and state governments, environmental and
academic groups, federal agencies, and local dischargers. Ten local entities
and the SWRCB (using Clean Water Act monies) are funding the study.
The San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board has initiated a
similar program to address environmental problems in San Diego Bay.


               PUBLIC CONCERNS FOR THE BIGHT

    There is intense public interest and awareness about environmental
quality in Southern California. As a result, the public has been very vocal
in advocating strong and effective environmental protection policies for the
Southern California Bight. A sampling of public concerns and perceived
policy needs for the bight ecosystem can be gained from the October
1986 triennnial review of the California ocean plan (State Water Resources
Control Board, 1987) and from the presentations of interested parties to
the case study panel. The following points were made by representatives
of citizen organizations:


    * The California ocean plan (State Water Resources Control Board,
difficult to assess the information provided by monitoring in the context of
  suhvague objectives.
      oNot enough attention is being paid to nonpoint sources of contain-
   innsentering the bight, such as stormwater drains and aerial fallout. The
   pla shuldconsider placing monitoring requirements on these sources.
    * There should be a shift from discharge standards and effluent lim-
itations based on allowable concentrations of contaminants in receiving
waters to standards and limitations based on mass emissions of contami-
nants. This would better reflect the loading of the marine environment.
    * A more complete assessment of the cumulative effects of marine
contamination is necessary.





                                   52

       The plan should require monitoring of sediments and biota to
better assess cumulative levels of contaminants and their associated effects.
       There should be more independent review and oversight of the
monitoring programs performed by dischargers.
    a Self monitoring should be eliminated and monitoring put in the
hands of state agencies.
    ï¿½ There should be better analysis of monitoring data submitted to
public agencies and better communication of that information to the public.
    a An oceanic institute associated with local universities should be
established to conduct regular monitoring currently performed by discharg-
ers, to coordinate monitoring by other agencies, and to perform related
research.
    * Standardized bioassay protocols and bioaccumulation tests should
be required to better assess the toxicity of effluents to marine life and the
hazards of eating fishery products from coastal areas.
    The public appears to expect monitoring activities to provide informa-
tion that answers four basic questions:
    1. Is it safe to swim in the ocean?
    2. Is it safe to eat the local seafood?
    3. Are fisheries and other living resources being adequately protected?
    4. Is the health of the ecosystem being safeguarded?
    These are the public expectations that the panel perceives drive the
actual monitoring programs. However, monitoring is carried out within
a broader societal context, which includes such issues as cost, the effects
of competing uses on land, water, and air quality, and tradeoffs between
short and long-term costs and benefits. The challenge is valid and useful
to management decision making in that it provides information addressing
public concerns.


                              SUMMARY
    The regulatory framework in the Southern California Bight is indeed
complex and far reaching. Successful implementation of monitoring pro-
grams often requires a high degree of cooperation among state and federal
officials. The efficient design of a monitoring system that can meet the vari-
ous objectives of regulatory interests and not impose unreasonable burdens
on the regulated community is a formidable task. In succeeding chapters,
the details of this system are discussed and its success at meeting these
criteria assessed.
    In part, the success of the regulatory program and the role that
monitoring plays depend on public confidence. The public continues to





                                   53

question the efficacy of monitoring and the status of the marine environ-
ment. Subsequent chapters will offer suggestions about the technical design
of monitoring programs that may address those questions.








                                  4
            Monitoring and Research in
          The ~Southern California Bight














    The relationship between research and monitoring activities in the
Southern California Bight is complex, making it difficult to arbitrarily
and consistently distinguish between the two. In this report, monitoring
generally refers to repeated measurements taken to comply with specific
regulations: research refers to measurement and experimental programs
undertaken to answer more open ended questions. In the panel's view,
monitoring and research are complementary activities that support each
other and that both provide important information needed for resource
management. Often the same agency will fund and/or direct both monitor-
ing and research. Monitoring results have stimulated research programs,
and research results have provided information that has been helpful in re-
ducing impacts and refining monitoring requirements. In addition, research
activities are often an integral part of monitoring programs in the bight.
    Although this chapter reviews research and monitoring programs sep-
arately, it is important to remember the significant links and interactions
between the two activities. These links exist because both monitoring and
research are concerned with measuring and understanding processes of
marine environmental change.
    In general, monitoring in the bight is focused on four broad areas of
concern:

    1. the effects of effluent from municipal sewage treatment plants;
    2. the effects of effluent from other sources, such as power plants,
refineries, and nonpoint sources;

                                 54





                                  55

    3. the status of resources such as fisheries and kelp beds; and
    4. effects on public health from water contact sports.
    Although these are useful organizing principles, in reality specific
programs overlap the boundaries between them. Monitoring related to
each of these four concerns is complemented by active research programs.
    The main characteristic of research and monitoring activities in the
bight is their broad diversity. Federal, state, and local agencies, along with
universities and private industry, are active members of the research and
monitoring community. This diversity stimulates innovation and careful
evaluation of research and monitoring results, but it also makes coordina-
tion and integration of monitoring more difficult.

                    THE MONITORING SECTOR
    The four monitoring areas described above reflect the existing regu-
latory environment (Chapter 3), with each kind of monitoring responding
to a different set of laws, regulations, permits, and limitations. (A com-
prehensive review of past and present monitoring programs can be found
in SCCWRP, 1988.) Effluent discharge and monitoring are controlled by
National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits, which
can contain effluent limitations (pertaining to the effluent) and water qual-
ity objectives (pertaining to the receiving waters). In California, these
are determined by EPA, based on provisions of the Clean Water Act, as
amended (CWA), and by the regional water quality control board issuing
the permit, based on the California ocean and thermal plans (State Water
Resources Control Board, 1975, 1987). Effluent limitations are specific nu-
merical standards; water quality objectives include both numerical (Table B
of the California ocean plan) and narrative standards (such as degradation
of the environment).
    The numerical effluent limitations are a combination of federal and
California ocean plan (State Water Resources Control Board, 1987) reg-
ulatory requirements and are based primarily on consideration of current
available technology (the technically or financially most feasible level of
contaminant removal attainable). Effluent limitations may be stated as
maximum acceptable concentrations of a constituent in the effluent or as
the maximum allowable mass emission per day. For thermal effluents, for
example, the maximum allowable difference in temperature between the
effluent plume and the receiving waters at 1,000 ft from the outfall or
diffuser is 40C (California thermal plan [State Water Resources Control
Board, 1975]). Compliance with such effluent limitations is determined
directly by analysis of effluent at specified intervals.
    The water quality objectives are also determined according to federal
laws and regulations and California ocean plan requirements (State Water





                                   56

Resources Control Board, 1987). They are numeric or narrative expressions
of the maximum allowable changes in various environmental parameters
that will not result in serious or long-term damage to the affected marine
ecosystem. Numeric objectives define allowable concentrations of waste
constituents after allowing for mixing within the zone of initial dilution
(ZID), the region within a specified horizontal distance from the end of an
outfall or any point along a discharge diffuser. The horizontal distance is
usually equal to the water depth at the discharge. In contrast to establishing
numeric objectives, demonstrating compliance with the narrative water
quality objectives can be difficult. It is based on periodic monitoring of
environmental conditions in the vicinity of the effluent discharge, and
criteria used to measure compliance with these narrative objectives are
often subjective and inferential.
    In contrast to this system of effluent monitoring, resource monitoring
is structured around compilation of commercial and sport catch statistics
and studies of the status of particular stocks.
    Routine health effects monitoring measures concentrations of bacterial
indicators (e.g., coliforms) along beaches to determine whether to close
sections of the coast to body contact sports.
    The following sections describe monitoring activities related to the
major sources of effluent and habitat change in the bight.


                         Municipal Discharges
    There are 16 municipal wastewater dischargers operating under
NPDES permits in the bight (Table 4-1). Of these, only the discharges
in Goleta, Orange County, and Encina have received waivers under Sec-
tion 301(h) of the Clean Water Act, as amended. Encina voluntarily
relinquished its waiver in 1988. The largest of the 16 discharges are oper-
ated by the city of Los Angeles (Hyperion), the County Sanitation Districts
of Los Angeles County (White Point), the County Sanitation Districts of
Orange County, and the city of San Diego (Point Loma) (Southern Califor-
nia Coastal Water Research Project [SCCWRP], 1987). (Detailed histories
of the regulatory actions and monitoring programs at each of these four
large discharges can be found in SCCWRP, 1988.) In general, monitoring
evolved from measurements of fecal contamination in the nearshore zone
to more comprehensive assessments of environmental conditions over a
broader area.
    Table 4-1 summarizes the required monitoring programs at each mu-
nicipal discharge in the bight. The wide variety in monitoring requirements
among these discharges reflects differences in the size of each discharge,
the levels of contaminants present, and the nature of the nearby marine
environment (e.g., presence of kelp beds or other valued resources). In





                                   57

addition, permits were granted at different times, and their requirements
reflect improvements in knowledge about the environment and changes in
regulatory emphasis. Differences among monitoring programs also stem
from the diverse orientations of the four regional water quality control
boards that administer NPDES permits in the bight. These are the Central
Coast, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, and San Diego regional boards. Boards dif-
fer in their staffing, level of experience, and responsiveness to local issues.
As described in Chapter 3, the regional boards are relatively autonomous.
    The current monitoring programs at two large municipal discharges,
along with their historical contexts and existing permit conditions, are
described in detail below. This will illustrate how monitoring has developed,
as well as the relationship among regulatory requirements, public concerns,
monitoring programs, and management decisions based on monitoring data.


    County Sanitation Districts of Orange County
    The County Sanitation Districts of Orange County (CSDOC) currently
provide service to more than 2 million people in 23 of the county's 26 cities
(CSDOC, 1987; SCCWRP, 1988). Two treatment plants, one at Fountain
Valley and the other at Huntington Beach, process about 255 million gal/day
of waste water. About 80 percent of the flow is from residential and
commercial users, and 20 percent from industry. The effluent, consisting of
about 40 percent primary treated and 60 percent secondary treated waste
water, is discharged through an outfall 5 mi from shore in 200 ft of water
off Huntington Beach.
    The discharge at Orange County was initiated in the 1920s with
screened effluent disposed of a short distance into the surf near the mouth
of the Santa Ana River. In 1949, bacterial monitoring along the beach
within 5 mi of the discharge was instituted at the request of the state health
department. In the mid 1950s, expanded treatment facilities and a new
outfall that discharged approximately 1 mi offshore were constructed. As
a consequence, the monitoring program was expanded in 1960 to include
offshore sampling of both the water column and sediments. In the late
1960s, sampling at additional nearshore stations was begun, and bacterial
monitoring at shoreline stations was increased to 5 days per week.
    In 1971, effluent was diverted from the old outfall 1 mi from shore
to a new outfall 5 mi from shore. At this time, the Santa Ana Regional
Water Quality Control Board designed a monitoring program to study the
effects of the change. Additional parameters and stations were added to
the existing monitoring program. The following year, monitoring of fish
populations began with the addition of trawl sampling to the program.
    The 1974 NPDES permit for the discharge increased the nearshore
bacterial monitoring effort and required additional stations and parameters









TABLE 4-1 Monitoring programs of the 16 Municipal Wastewater Dischargers in the Southern California Bight


                     Flow      Bact-       Water    Sediments/               Epifauna/         Tissue       Histopa-   Mussel    Kelp
                     MGD       eria        Column   Infauna                  Fish              Analysis    thology      Cages


Goleta                 6.8    *l/week;   8 sta/    6 sta; 3 reps(ea);        2 sta             3 compo-   no            no       no
  (301h)                       7 sta'      month    semiannually             annually          sites at
                                                                                              2 sta

Santa Barbara         11       *I/week;   4 sta      8 sta semi-             fish, 5 sta semi-              no          no       no
                               5 sta      quarterly annually every          annually every
                                                     3rd year               3rd year

Montecito               1.5    No          No        4 sta; odd years

Summerland             0.15   No receiving water monitoring

Oxnard                22.6    *l/week;   7 sta       3 reps (ea);            3 sta semi-       2 sta;       no          no       no
                               21 sta     quarterly  7 sta semi-            annually;          3 reps;
                                                     annually               2 reps            1 spp
                                                                                              annually

Los Angeles          400       7sta/day    25 sta/   3 reps;                 6 sta             6 sta        no          no       no
City, Hyperion                 plus 17    week       39 sta/                 quarterly         annually;
                               11 sta/               quarterly                                3 sta
                               week                                                            semiannually

County Sani-         360       7days/      118       18 sta                  8-12 sta          12 sta                            Diving
tation Districts               week;       month    semiannually;            semiannually      quarterly                         8 sta
of Los Angeles                 7 sta;                44 stations                                                                 semi-
County, JWPCP                  1/week;               every 5 years                                                               annually
                               5 sta

Los Angeles           20       Iday/week; 7 sta/    no                       no                no           no          no       no
City, Terminal                 3 sta       month
Island




                             a         ~~-.    - 







 Avalon                  0.4     Iday/week; 5/week    5 rep cores;               no                 no            no          no        no
                                 5 sta;                  5 stations
                                 Iday/month             annually

County Sani-         255        5days/      9/month   3 or 5 reps;              2 rep trawls        12 sta       60          yes       no
tation Districts                week;        17/quarter 13 sta/quarter          at 8 sta            semi-        fish
of Orange County                17 sta                  + 40 annually           semiannually       annually      per year
(301h)

Aliso                  12       2days/      7 sta/    7 sed/year                no                 no            no          no        annual
(ALMA)                          week;       month       5 rep/7 sta/year                                                               aerial
                                 16 sta                  1 rep/7 sta/year                                                              photo

SERRA                  13.5     1/month;   7 sta        7 sta                   no                 no            no          no        no
                                31 sta      month       annually

Oceanside              11       I/month;    7 sta       No additional monitoring if effluent meets standards
                                21 sta      annually

Encina                 15       *I/week;    11 sta/   6 sta                     no                 4 sta         2 sta       no        annual
(301h, 85-88)                   5 sta       month       annually;                                  semi-         3 com-                aerial
                                                        5 reps                                     annually     posites               photo
                                                                                                                annually
San Elijo              16.7     1/month;   7 sta/       7 sta/sed 6 months      no                 no            no          no        qtrly
                                2 sta       month    metals & phenols;                                                                aerial
                                                        7 sta/year                                                                    photo
                                                        biota 3 sta/year

San Diego             180       *2days/week; 20 stal 18 sta/quarter;            no                 no            no          no        annual
City,                           8 sta;      month       infauna-5 reps                                                                 aerial
Pt. Loma                        20 sta;                                                                                                photo
                                month

*= sampling is more frequent in summer than in winter.
* sta=stations; reps=repetitions
SOURCE: Collected for the committee by SCCWRP.



                                                                                 4

                                  60

in the offshore monitoring program. In particular, metals, phenols, biolog-
ical oxygen demand (BOD), pesticides, and PCBs were to be measured in
offshore sediments. In the late 1970s, this program was amended to reduce
sampling for benthic biota to twice yearly instead of quarterly.
    In 1978, the districts began operating an activated sludge facility at
the first of their two treatment plants, and in 1983 at the second. These
facilities improved the quality of the wastewater discharge.
    In 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted the CS-
DOC a 301(h) variance for a five-year waiver from the complete secondary
treatment requirements of the CWA. An expanded monitoring program
was required as a condition of the NPDES permit issued jointly by the
Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board and EPA Region IX
(Table 4-2). EPA will use the monitoring data to assess whether the 301(h)
permit should be renewed upon expiration, while the regional board will
use them to determine compliance with the 1983 California ocean plan
(State Water Resources Control Board, 1983). EPA must conduct a public
hearing to consider any major changes to the permit conditions. If there
is major opposition to such changes, they may not be allowed. Regional
board action is also required for any substantive modification of the permit
conditions.
    As described above, the NPDES permit contains effluent limitations
and water quality objectives. It also contains specific provisions and time
tables for meeting the limitations of the permit and submitting various
reports. The overall objectives of this 301(h) monitoring program, as
specified by EPA (1987) and 40 CFR 125.62, are to:
    * determine compliance with NPDES permit terms and conditions;
    ï¿½ document short- and long-term effects of the discharge on receiving
waters, sediment, biota, and on beneficial uses of the receiving water; and
    : assess the effectiveness of toxics control programs that limit dis-
charge of toxic chemicals to the receiving waters.
    Tb accomplish these objectives, the permit (No. CA0110604) specifies
several kinds of monitoring (Table 4-2) and their objectives (Table 4-3).

    City of Los Angeles
    The city of Los Angeles' Hyperion treatment plant in Playa del Rey,
with a design capacity of 420 million gal/day, is the largest sewage treatment
plant discharging treated waste water to the bight (SCCWRP, 1988; John
Dorsey, Hyperion Teatment Plant, personal communication). Planning is
currently under way to double its capacity. The flow averages approximately
75 percent primary treated and 25 percent secondary treated waste water.
    Treated wastes are discharged to Santa Monica Bay through an outfall






                                         61

TABLE 4-2 Summary of the 301(h) Water Quality Monitoring Program Performed by the County
Sanitation Districts of Orange County

                  Number of stations  Replicates/
Program elemnent    and frequency       station          Parameters measured

Beach coliforms     17 daily            I                Total coliforms (MPN/100 ml)

Water quality       9 monthly;          1 each           Temperature, salinity, light trans-
                  17 quarterly       every 3 (or 6) m mission, total suspended solids,
                                     to bottom        ammonia, coliforms, water color,
                                                     dissolved oxygen, pH

Trawls (demersal    8 semiannually      2                Fish/epifauna taxonomy, health,
  communities)                                          length/weight of 30 species

Benthic grabs       13 quarterly;       Quarterly-in-   Infauna retained on 1 mmn screen,
                  40 annually         fauna, 3 chem-   grain size, oil, cyanide, sulfide,
                                     istry; annually-  volatile solids, metals, extracta-
                                     1 infauna, 1     ble organics, pesticides, PCBs,
                                     chemistry        volatile organics, total organic carbon
Bioaccumulation
  infauna          6 annually          5 g tissue total  Metals, synthetic organics, pesticides
  fish             5 annually          20=60 specimens Metals, synthetic organics, pesticides
  epifauna         5 annually          5=58 specimens  Metals, synthetic organics, pesticides

Fish histo-         8 semiannually      60 specimens     Liver histopathology, visual for
  pathology                                              tumors and lesions

Sport fishing       4 semiannually      As many as       Metals, synthetic organics, pesti-
  survey                               possible         cides; liver histopathology, visual
                                                     for tumors and lesions




terminating about 5 mi from shore in about 187 ft of water. Until Novem-
ber 1987, digested sludge and secondary effluent in a ratio of 1 to 3 were
discharged through an outfall terminating nearly 7 mi offshore at the head
of Santa Monica submarine canyon in about 300 ft of water. Periodically,
during unusually high flows or in emergencies, chlorinated secondary efflu-
ent may be discharged through an outfall that terminates 1 mi from shore
in 50 ft of water.
     The  city of Los Angeles began  discharging raw sewage  into Santa
Monica Bay at Hyperion in 1894, and constructed a central outfall sewer
in 1908. At the time, the area was relatively remote and there was minimal
awareness about potential health hazards associated with the discharge of
raw sewage. The State Department of Health began receiving complaints
about fouled beaches in the vicinity of the discharge by 1912. As a result,
an outfall was constructed in 1924 to carry screened effluent 1 mi offshore.
However, a break in the outfall pipe 500 ft from shore, a growing urban
population, and the need to bypass the screen during storm flows led to






                                       62

TABLE 4-3 Objectives Specified in the NPDES Permit for the 301(h) Monitoring Program
Performed by the County Sanitation Districts of Orange County.

Program element                        Objectives

Beach and surf zone                    Assess bacteriological conditions in areas used for
                                    water contact sports and shellfish harvest.
                                    Determine effectiveness of treatment to remove
                                    floatables that affect health and aesthetics.

Water column                           Determine compliance with water quality objectives.
                                    Provide data to support interpretation of biology
                                    data.

Trawls (demersal communities)          Assess presence of balanced indigenous populations
                                    of demersal fish and benthic invertebrates.

Benthic grabs                          Assess presence of balanced indigenous population
                                    of benthic invertebrates. Evaluate physical and
                                    chemical quality of the sediments.

Bioaccumulation                        Determine accumulation of toxic pollutants.
(mussels, infauna, fish,
epifauna)

Fish histopathology                    Assess prevalence of lesions, tumors, and liver
                                    abnormalities in local fish.

Sport fishing survey                   Monitor uptake of pollutants in fish consumed by
                                    humans in order to determine impact on public
                                    health. Assess impacts on local fish populations.



repeated recontamination of Santa Monica Bay beaches. This caused the
Department of Public Health to close beaches near Hyperion in Santa
Monica Bay from 1946 to 1951 due to bacterial and grease contamination.
     These continued problems with bacterial and aesthetic contamination
led to legal action that resulted in construction of a larger outfall and a
secondary treatment system in 1950 (Garber and Wada,  1988).  Ireated
effluent and about 50 percent of the sludge were discharged to the bay,
and reduced levels of contamination allowed the beaches to be reopened
in 1951.
     By 1952, growing public concern about contamination of Santa Monica
Bay prompted comprehensive investigations by the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography and the University of Southern California's (USC) Allan
Hancock Foundation. The studies' objectives were to determine the bay's
physical and biological conditions, sources and magnitude of pollution, and
optimal design and location for deep-water outfalls. Based on data showing
that bacterial contamination never traveled more than 5 mi along the beach
in either direction from the outfall, a 5 mi-long effluent outfall was built






                                   63

in 1959. Prior to that, a 7 mi-long outfall had been built in 1957 to carry
sludge to the head of Santa Monica Canyon.
    Monitoring began coincident with the closure of public beaches in
1946, when routine daily surf and water column monitoring for coliforms
was initiated by the Department of Public Health. This program was later
incorporated into the monitoring mandated by the Regional Water Quality
Control Board, and in 1956 was expanded to include additional water
column and shoreline stations throughout the bay. This was the first such
marine monitoring program in Southern California.
    Hyperion's monitoring program was significantly enlarged in 1974, with
the issuance of the plant's NPDES permit by the EPA and the state and
regional water quality control boards. This permit required monitoring of
infauna, some sediment chemistry, and water column bacteria. In 1980,
the city signed a consent decree to cease sludge discharge to the ocean by
February 15, 1986 (later extended to December 31, 1987). In 1982, the
city of Los Angeles applied for a 301(h) waiver from the requirements to
convert to secondary treatment, which EPA initially approved.  The Los
Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board did not concur, and a
waiver was not issued. However, in 1984 monitoring requirements under
the existing NPDES permit were increased with the addition of trawling
and replication at several benthic stations both within and outside the ZID
of the 5-mi outfall. Hyperion received a new NPDES permit in 1987 that
included a greatly expanded and modified monitoring program (Table 4-4).
    The overall objectives of the Hyperion monitoring program differ
somewhat from those of the Orange County program, partly because Hy-
perion is not operating under a 301(h) waiver. The overall objectives of
this NPDES monitoring program are to:
    * determine compliance with NPDES permit terms and conditions;
and
    * determine that state water quality standards are met (40 CFR
122.41[j] and 12.48[b].
    As in Orange County's permit, subsidiary objectives are specified
that generally parallel those described in Table 4-3. However, Hyper-
ion's NPDES permit (No. CA0109991) contains one important difference.
It incorporates language stating that the monitoring program may be mod-
ified based on information generated by the program. This is an important
source of flexibility that is discussed in greater depth in Chapter 6. Specif-
ically, the permit states:
    Once an adequate background database is established and predictable relation-
    ships among the biological, water quality, and effluent monitoring variables are
    demonstrated, it may be appropriate to revise the monitoring program. Revisions
    may be made under the direction of the EPA and the Regional Board at any
    time during the permit term, and may include a reduction or increase in the






                                              64

TABLE 4-4  Monitoring Program for Hyperion (1987)


Monitoring program               Parameters                                         Frequency

Shoreline water                   Total and fecal coliforms, enterococcus,          Daily
quality (17 stations)            temperature, visual observations

Nearshore water                   Total and fecal coliforms, enterococcus,          Weekly
quality (11 stations)            temperature, DO, transmissivity profiles,
                                visual observations 

                                Above parameters plus suspended solids,           Monthly
                                oil and grease

Offshore water                   Profiles for DO, temperature, salinity, pH,        Weekly
quality (25 stations)            visual observations


Microlayer (12                    Profiles for transmissivity and trans-            Monthly
stations)                        parency; discrete samples for ammonia-
                                nitrogen, suspended solids, TOC, oil and
                                grease

Sediment chemistry               Three replicate samples for oil and grease         3 times per year
(39 stations)                    and TOC

(subset of 7 stations)           TOC, I-S, oil and grease, grain size, 122          Annually
                                priority pollutants (one sample)

Sediment biology                  Three replicate samples for above                 Quarterly
(39 stations)                    sediment parameters

(subset of 7 stations)           Macrofaunal community analysis (one                Semiannually
                                sample)
                                                                                Quarterly

Demersal fish and                Five replicates for macrofaunal community          Quarterly
macroinvertebrates                analysis
(trawling) (6
stations)                        Duplicate trawls for community analysis            Semiannually


Contaminants in                  Three replicates for priority pollutants in        Semiannually
sport fish (rig-                 tissues of homyhead turbot and
fishing) (2 sites)                ridgebacked prawn

                                Three replicate samples for priority
                                pollutants in muscle of selected sport fish

DO = dissolved oxygen; TOC = total organic carbon


                                         (Table 4-4)





                                   65

    number of parameters to be monitored, the frequency of monitoring, or the
    number and size of the samples collected.
    In addition to this permit language related to flexibility, the Hyperion
program also includes a chemical sampling plan that allows monitoring
resources to be used more efficiently. In the first year of the program, the
entire list of priority pollutants is sampled in the effluent, the sediments,
and selected organisms. In the second and third years, only those pollutants
found during the first year are sampled for. Then in the fourth year, the
entire list of pollutants is sampled for again. The rationale for this approach
was to focus monitoring effort on those pollutants that occur in the effluent
and the environment.


                         Coastal Power Plants
    The history of monitoring of heated cooling water discharges from
coastal electric power plants is much less involved than that for sewage dis-
charges. Conventional generating stations on the shore of the bight were all
completed before 1971. Between 1971 -and 1973, thermal effects monitor-
ing programs were required by the regional boards. Temperature profiles
were measured in the water column; sediment grain size distribution was
measured; and infauna, epifauna, plankton, and nekton communities in
the vicinity of the outfalls were investigated. Some power plants contin-
ued these studies on their own through 1978, but others monitored only

entrainment of fish in the water intakes. At the Encina generating station,
a study of effects of thermal discharges on the giant kelp community was
initiated in 1975 and continued through 1986.
       Ine978 newu at pemitst pwere issedants annuale monitAsdesribed
progmY7'nwNDSpramis were begueand atna mospoeplnitsoTbe45 sdsribed
  belw (ee"The Research Sector"), the Southern California Edison Com-
pany (SCE) maintains an extensive program of special studies to develop
information to supplement that gained through the monitoring programs.


    San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
    The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), located on
the coast south of San Clemente, includes three units: Unit I was put in
operation in 1968, and Units 2 and 3 came on line in 1985. The three
reactors have enormous cooling-water requirements. The once-through
seawater cooling system takes in approximately 6,300 M3/S from nearshore
intakes. The diffusers for Units 2 and 3 are unique to the bight. Each
is approximately 0.6-mi long. In order to meet California thermal plan
(State Water Resources Control Board, 1975) requirements, they were
designed to entrain a volume of water 10 times the original discharge flow.











TABLE 4-5 NPDES Monitoring Programs at 10 Coastal Power Plants in the Southern California Bight


Generating         Max flow  Water                      Sedi-                             Epifauna
station            (MGDP        column ments                           Infauna            and fish            Kelp

Alamitos    1,270                12 stations            grain          4 stations;        7 stations;         No
                                                       size;          4 repetitions     2 repetitions
                                                       5 stations

Onnond         688                8 stations            7 stations    6 stations;         6 stations;         No
Beach                                                                   4 repetitions     2 repetitions

Long Beach  772                   8 stations            grain          6 stations;        3 stations;         No
                                                       size;          4 repetitions     2 repetitions
                                                       6 stations

Mandalay       255               15 stations            5 stations    5 stations;         3 stations          No
                                                                      4 repetitions


Scattergood   495                12 stations            grain           4 stations;       2 stations;         No
                                                       size;          4 repetitions     2 repetitions
                                                       4 stations


El Segundo   606                 12 stations            No              4 stations        12 stations         No



Redondo    1,140                 16 stations            grain           7 stations        6 stations;         No
Beach                                                   size;                             2 repetitions
                                                       7 stations













Huntington   519              3 stations             Metals,       3 stations        3 stations;       No
Beach                                                organics and                    2 repetitions
                                                  grain size;
                                                  6 stations


SONGS       3,268             Temp and               No            No                Fish, 9 stations  Acoustic at
                            transmissivity                                        bimonthly          3 stations semi-
                             at 22 stations; DO' &                                                    annually
                            pH at 4 stations
                             quarterly.
                             Metals 5 stations and
                             chlorine 8 stations
                             triannually

Encina        860              10 stations           No            No                No                Aerial
                                                                                                 photo


 Water column monitoring focuses primarily on temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and transmissivity, and does not
include sampling for contaminants. Sampling at all plants except Huntington Beach and San Onofre is done
semiannually, that is, once every two years. Huntington Beach is sampled every year during the summer, and San
Onofre is sampled as indicated in the table. Also note that Huntington Beach and San Onofre, unlike the other
plants, sample different numbers of stations for epifauna and fish.
b MGD = millions of gallons per day
 DO = dissolved oxygen

SOURCE: From SCCWRP, 1988.





                                  68

The resultant plume is directed offshore and has been shown to severely
influence nearshore circulation patterns in the vicinity of the plant.
    Marine monitoring at SONGS has been more intensive than that at
other coastal power plants. The programs carried out at SONGS have been
unique in the bight in terms of the intensity of monitoring devoted to a
single discharge.
    Monitoring and special studies have been performed continuously at
the site since 1963. In 1964, baseline environmental monitoring was per-
formed prior to operation of Unit 1. These included profiles of temperature
and water clarity in the water column; measurements of local ocean cur-
rents; and characterization of intertidal, subtidal hard bottom, and kelp
communities.
    In 1974 and 1976, monitoring determined the environmental effects
of sand disposal and dredging for emplacement of the Units 2 and 3
outfalls. In 1976, the San Diego RWQCB issued NPDES permits, includ- 
ing receiving-water monitoring requirements, for all three units. Current
NPDES monitoring requirements are summarized in Thble 4-5.
    Along with these NPDES monitoring requirements, SCE is obligated
to carry out further monitoring by other agencies. Impingement of fish in
the intakes is monitored for the California Department of Fish and Game.
Periodic monitoring of radionuclides is required by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. Most monitoring occurs within 6 mi of the plant, with refer-
ence stations at 30 or 37 mi. Direct radiation is monitored continuously;4
airborne radiation is monitored weekly; ocean water is monitored monthly;
beach sand and bottom sediments are monitored twice a year; and tissues
of nonmigratory marine animals are monitored quarterly.
    In addition, the California Coastal Commission required Southern
California Edison to form the Marine Review Committee. This indepen-
dent committee was established in 1974 by the California Coastal Zone
Conservation Commission (now called the California Coastal Commission)
in response to controversy about, apid as a condition of, the permit for
discharge of cooling water from SONGS Units 2 and 3. The specific re-
sponsibility of the committee was to protect marine life and resources from
potential or actual damage directly related to the design and operation of
the cooling water system of Units 2 and 3. Its studies focused on four
areas:
    1. determining the effects of SONGS Unit I on the marine environ-
ment,
    2. predicting the effects of Units 2 and 3 on the marine environment
and recommending needed design changes in the cooling water system to
the California Coastal Commission,





                                  69

    3. determining the effects of SONGS Units 2 and 3 by performing
both pre- and post-operational monitoring programs, and
    4. investigating possible mitigation and enhancement measures for
any damage encountered.
    An important feature of the committee was its authority to make
recommendations about operational and design changes to the cooling
system, up to and including the construction of cooling towers.
    The Marine Review Committee's program was noted for intense and
comprehensive investigations, length of time committed to the study, and
magnitude of total expenditures. Virtually all aspects of the marine envi-
ronment near SONGS were investigated, including soft- and hard-substrate
benthos, ichthyoplankton and adult fish, kelp beds, phytoplankton, zoo-
plankton, epibenthic plankton, and the physical and chemical oceanography
of the coastal zone. Investigations began in 1974, and study designs were,
in most cases, firmly established by 1979. The resulting data sets cover
eight years, and total expenditures for the program through production of
the final report are estimated to be $47 million.
    The committee's studies are unique among large monitoring programs
in the bight in several important ways. First, the program was several times
larger than any other monitoring program in the bight. Second, because
the MRC was an independent entity, program designs could be adapted as
needed. Third, monitoring plans were deliberately devised to detect pre-
determined amounts of change. Finally, repetitive, time series monitoring
was integrated with modeling and research to constantly improve the ability
of the monitoring programs to detect change.
    Field work on nearly all projects was completed in December 1986,
and final contractor reports were due in December 1987. The final report
of the committee was scheduled for submission to the California Coastal
Commission in 1989. Coincident with the end of the committee's studies,
Southern California Edison began implementing procedures to make the
committee's data available to investigators.


                    Oil Exploration and Production

    T    here are few o    ngoing monitoring programs in the  bight associated
with oil exploration and production. This is partly because, except for
platf          orms in the Santa Barbara Channel, the nearshore THUMS project
in Long Beach, and the Aminoil project in Huntington Beach, there is no
oil production in the nearshore regions of the bight. In addition, there
are relatively few refineries along the coast discharging directly into the
ocean. Finally, further exploration in the offshore regions of the bight has
been delayed pending resolution of conflicts between the state and the




                                   70

federal government over oil and gas development policy for California's
outer continental shelf.
    EPA Region IX is considering the establishment of a monitoring pro-
gram in the Santa Barbara Channel where extensive oil production occurs.
The program's objectives will be to document production impacts from
existing platforms and follow recovery after drilling ends. The THUMS
project in Long Beach monitors a range of water column and sediment
parameters at six stations. Sampling began before disposal. In the water
column, salinity, temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen are measured con-
tinuously, while heavy metals, oil and grease, suspended solids, cyanides,
and organohalogens will be monitored quarterly during the first two years of
the program. In the sediments, a range of parameters-including barium,
EPA priority pollutants, grain size, petroleum hydrocarbons, and BOD-
will be monitored semiannually. The Aminoil project in Huntington Beach
measures grain size, barium, and heavy metals, and collects five replicate
cores for infauna analysis at six sediment sites annually.
    In Carpinteria, in the northern region of the bight, Chevron monitors
water column, sediment, infauna, and epifauna parameters annually at four
stations in the vicinity of the discharge from its wastewater treatment plant.
The plant discharges 0.6 million gal/day of treated oil process waste. Water
column variables measured include temperature, transmissivity, dissolved
oxygen, pH, and ammonia. Sediment variables measured include sulfides,
grain size, heavy metals, BOD, total organic carbon, total nitrogen, nitrate,
oil and grease, and aromatic hydrocarbons. Infauna samples are identified
to species, biomass is measured, and large epifaunal algae are identified.
    Chevron also operates a refinery at El Segundo, in Santa Monica Bay.
Organic matter is measured annually at two offshore sediment stations. In
the water column, temperature, oil and grease, dissolved oxygen, and pH
are measured monthly at four shore stations and two offshore stations.


                 Ocean Dumping and Dredge Disposal
    There are no long-term ocean dumping monitoring programs for off-
shore sites in Southern California. Ocean dumping in the bight is currently
limited to dredge material disposal. Two of the three active dredge dump-
sites (LA2 and LA5) have only been sampled as part of the EIS/EIR process
to designate them as permanent disposal sites. The first environmental sur-
vey of the third site (LA3) is currently in progress. The designation of LA2
and LA5 dump sites expired at the end of 1988, leaving only LA3 available
to receive material from new projects. Routine ocean monitoring at the
dump sites is under consideration by both EPA and the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers.
    Dredge permit applications do not require monitoring at the dumpsite.





                                   71

They do require chemical, bioaccumulation, and bioassay testing at the
dredging site, in order to determine the suitability of the material for ocean
disposal.


                           Nonpoint Sources
    Nonpoint sources of contaminants are those that are diffuse or poorly
defined. They include rainout or fallout from the air, surface runoff from
land, and multiple small inputs, such as those from individual houses, busi-
nesses, and farms. Monitoring nonpoint source contamination is difficult
precisely because it is so diffuse. It is technically challenging both to moni-
tor such contaminant input and to clearly identify sources of elevated levels
found in the environment.
    Nonpoint sources are attracting greater attention from both regulatory
agencies and the public, with most of this attention devoted to storm
drains and riverine input. As a result of a steady decrease in the mass
emissions from coastal wastewater treatment plants, mass emissions of
some chemicals from stormwater runoff now approach those in effluents
from coastal wastewater treatment plants (Table 4-6). As described in
Chapter 1, precipitation in Southern California is highly seasonal. As a
result, during dry periods a significant percentage of riverine flow can be
composed of secondary and tertiary treated municipal wastewater from
inland sewage treatment plants. Such inland treatment plants discharging
to the Los Angeles or San Gabriel rivers may have flows in the range of 20
to 100 million gal/day.
    As Garber (1987) points out, stormwater and riverine drainage en-
ters the nearshore zone directly, while treated municipal wastewater is
discharged 2 to 7 miles offshore, usually in deep water (about 100 ft).
Potential impacts on recreational beaches may therefore be greater from
land runoff than from offshore discharge of treated waste water.
    In spite of these potential impacts, there is presently no mandated
responsibility for monitoring land runoff. Individual county agencies re-
sponsible for stormwater systems may voluntarily perform such monitoring.
For example, in Los Angeles County the County Department of Public
Works monitors drainage facilities, and in Orange County such monitoring
is performed by the County Environmental Management Agency. The only
existing statutory basis for managing storm drainage systems is the NPDES
permit program. However, agencies with overall management responsibility
for stormwater drainage systems (e.g., Department of Public Works) are
not now required to administer NPDES permits granted by other agencies
for the multitude of individual discharges to the drainage system. There
is thus no clear responsibility to monitor the drainage system itself or its
discharges to the ocean.





                                      72

TABLE 4-6 Estimated Average Emissions in Metric Tons Per Year of Several Constituents
from the Los Angeles River and from the Two Largest Municipal Sewage Treatment Plants
Discharging to the Southern California Bight

                 Los Angeles River

Constituent        1971/1972    1979/1980    1984/1985   JWPCP       Hyperion'

Total extracta-
 ble organics       ---        6,400        28,600      7,860       13,200
Total ali-
 phatics            ---          ---          270         ---          ---
Naphthalenes         ---          --.-           0.29      ---         ---
Polynuclear
 aromatics          ---          ---            2.4       ----
Total DDT             0.27         0.10          0.02       0.22          0.02
Total PCBs            0.75         0.09          0.01       0.21         < 0.12
Silver              < 1.0        < 1.0         < 1.0        4.5         12
Cadmium               3.7          1.2         < 1.0        3.8          8.2
Chromium             24           30            11         53           64
Copper               38           25            15         43          131
Iron              5,060        14,700        4,050         ---         ---
Manganese           137          188            78         ---         ---
Nickel               22            18            5.5       53           49
Lead                273           45            32         24           41
Zinc                153          139            81        131          151

'Joint Water Pollution Control Plant, County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, Palos
Verdes, California.
bHyperion Wastewater Treatment Plant, City of Los Angeles, Playa del Rey, California.

SOURCE: SCCWRP, 1986c.


     Currently, nearly all NPDES-permitted discharges to drainage systems
in the bight have strict effluent limitations and dischargers are required to
do effluent monitoring.  For example, all municipal wastewater treatment
plants discharging to the river/stormwater system in Southern California
measure priority pollutants in effluent semiannually and volatile organics
quarterly. The 1987 amendments to the Clean Water Act require more
monitoring of stormwater discharges.
     The Los Angeles County monitoring program provides an example of
the type of voluntary monitoring performed by agencies managing stormwa-
ter drainage systems in Southern California. Los Angeles County encom-
passes a drainage area of 4,100 mi2 with a population in excess of eight
million. Drainage of the area, primarily into the Southern California Bight,
is provided by several rivers (such as the Los Angeles and San Gabriel
rivers) and an extensive system of underground drains and open channels.
The main flows to this system are from:





                                  73

    * precipitation;
    * NPDES-permitted discharges of treated industrial and municipal
wastewater;
    * fire-fighting waste water (often containing high concentrations of
contaminants);
    * nuisance water (e.g., wash-down, excess lawn watering, etc.);
    * accidental sewer overflows; and
    * daily, weekly, and other periodic plant and site cleanup and wash
down from business, commercial, and residential sources.
    The Los Angeles County Flood Control District (since renamed the
Los Angeles County Department of Public Works) began monitoring the
drainage system in the 1930s because some of the runoff was used for
groundwater recharge. In the mid 1960s, the water quality program was
expanded to consider ocean disposal of stormwater runoff. The monitoring
program was greatly reduced between 1984 and 1987, but much of it was
reinstituted in 1988.
    Water samples are collected during two to four storms per year from
20 stations along rivers, creeks, and drains. They are analyzed for inorganic
minerals and pH, bacteria (total and fecal coliforms and enterococcus),
total petroleum hydrocarbons, 12 heavy metals, total organic carbon, BOD,
8 volatile organic compounds, 15 pesticides, total suspended solids, and
volatile suspended solids. Samples from the Rio Hondo Channel and San
Gabriel River are also analyzed for priority pollutants.
    Samples of dry weather (non-storm) flows are collected from 27 stations
every month. These samples are analyzed for minerals, bacteria, total
petroleum hydrocarbons, heavy metals, and oil and grease. Total organic
carbon, BOD, and volatile organic compounds are analyzed quarterly or
semiannually.

              Shoreline Erosion and Beach Replenishment
    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) and the California De-
partment of Boats and Waterways carry out the Coast of California Storm
and Tidal Wave Program. This is intended to be a long-term program
to develop baseline information on changes in beach profiles and ocean
conditions along the California coast. The data will be used to monitor
beach erosion and to assist in planning beach replenishment activities.
    Approximately 60 sites between Oceanside and the U.S.-Mexican bor-
der were monitored semiannually between 1983 and 1988. Profiling efforts
are expected to move to Orange and Los Angeles counties for the next
five years. Semiannual monitoring of beach profiles in association with a
sand bypass project at Oceanside Harbor has occurred since 1985 and may
continue in the future.




                                                                                   A
                                  74

     Arelated program is carried out by the Ocean Engineering Research
Group at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which monitors wave 
climatology at ten nearshore and offshore sites in Southern California. This
project has collected over 10 years' worth of data for use by mariners and
in coastal physical and oceanographic studies. The project is funded by the
U.S. Army COE and the state of California.

                         Resource Monitoring
    Resource monitoring is the responsibility of the California Department
of Fish and Game, which collects informiation on sport and commercial
fish catches and on exploitation of kelp beds in the bight. The present
system of collecting catch information is straightforward and is described
below, however the history of fisheries monitoring in California is long4
and complex. It is intimately associated with the California Cooperative
Oceanic Fisheries Investigation (CalCOFI) program, which is unique for
the spatial extent and consistency through time of its investigations into
oceanography and fisheries biology. This history is summarized below and
recounted in more detail in SCCVWR (1988).


    Current Resource Monitoring
    Commercial fishermen are required to report catch statistics to the
Department of Fish and Game. Both fin and shellfish (e.g., abalone, sea
urchins, lobsters) are included in these reporting requirements. Finfish
catches have been monitored since 1918, and statistics currently include
species caught and the location and weight of the catch. Daily logs of sea
urchin and lobster catch numbers and locations have been reported for at
least the last 10 years.
    Commercial party-boat operators in the sport fishery are required to
keep a log of the number and species of fish caught, number of anglers
fishing, hours fished, and area fished. These records have been kept
continuously by the Department of Fish and Game since 1935, with the
exception of the five years during World War II (Young, 1969; Clark, 1982).
    In 1975, the department initiated the Southern California IndependentI
Sport Fishing Survey to monitor catches by recreational anglers. In 1979,
the department, in collaboration with the National Marine Fisheries Ser-
vice (NMFS), began a statewide program to monitor recreational catches.
The objectives of these programs were to determine the magnitude and
composition of the catch, to estimate effort expended by anglers and divers
from private boats, and to assess the degree of compliance with state fishing
laws (Wine, 1979).
    Monitoring of artificial reefs began off Southern California in the late





                                  75

1950s, in order to test the effectiveness of artificial reefs in increasing
the availability of marine organisms and improving fishing. This program
ended in 1964 and no formal studies were undertaken for 15 years, although
reef building continued. In 1979, the Department of Fish and Game, in
conjunction with Southern California Edison, began a six-year monitoring
study of the development of marine life on the Pendelton Artificial Reef
near the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The objective was to
develop a method of mitigating potential losses of kelp beds due to power
plant operations. The success of this study resulted in an expanded program
by the department to build and monitor artificial reefs throughout the
Southern California Bight (Grant, 1987). This monitoring program is
designed to identify the effects of important variables such as depth and
reef topography on the biological communities that colonize reefs.

    Historical Monitoring and the CalCOFI Program
    Monitoring of marine fish and shellfish resources in the Southern Cal-
ifornia Bight has continued for more than 70 years. This monitoring has
almost from the beginning been closely associated with research programs
on fisheries. For this reason, the CalCOFI program is described here rather
than in the research section below. In 1914, the California Department
of Commercial Fisheries was established to collect fisheries statistics, de-
velop improved methods for catching and processing fish, and study the
life histories of commercially important fish and shellfish (Hewitt, 1988).
Beginning in 1918, the Department of Commercial Fisheries collected catch
data from commercial fishermen and fish dealers on species composition,
weight, gear type, location, and intended commercial use. Much research
was also performed during the 1920s and 1930s on fishery stock size, year
class abundance, and fish distribution along the Pacific coast.
    After World War II, state fishery agencies in California, Oregon, and
Washington formed the Pacific Marine Fisheries Commission, and were
later joined by fishery agencies in British Columbia. The commission's
original focus was to study the Pacific sardine fishery, but when the fishery
collapsed in 1947, it turned its attention to salmon, albacore, bottomfish,
Dungeness crab, and shrimp (Croker, 1982).
    After the sardine fishery collapsed, the California State legislature
established the Marine Research Committee, composed of members from
the commercial fishing industry and the California Department of Fish
and Game. The committee set up a Fish and Game Preservation Fund to
support research to improve the commercial marine fisheries of California
and develop new commercial marine products.
    In 1948, the committee established the California Cooperative Sar-
dine Research Program. Its purpose was to study the distribution and





                                  76

natural history of sardines, their availability to the commercial fishery,
fishing methods, and the physical, chemical, and biological oceanographic
processes influencing sardine populations off California. The program in-
cluded members from the California Department of Fish and Game, the
Federal Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Hopkins Marine Station, the Cal-
ifornia Academy of Sciences, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In
1953, the program was renamed the California Cooperative Oceanic Fish-
eries Investigation (CalCOFI) and was expanded to include consideration
of species other than sardines. By 1960, CalCOFI's objectives had evolved
to understanding factors governing abundance, distribution, and variations
of pelagic marine fishes, emphasizing the oceanographic and biological
factors affecting sardines and other marine life in the California Current
system (Baxter, 1982).
    The Fisheries Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (FCMA)
gave the federal government management authority over commercial fish-
eries in the exclusive economic zone (the EEZ, 3 to 200 mi from shore),
superseding the management role of the Marine Research Committee.
The FCMA established regional fisheries management councils to develop
plans for regulating harvesting of commercially valuable fish stocks and for
controlling access of foreign fishing or processing vessels to U.S. territorial
waters.
    However, the NMFS, the California Department of Fish and Game,
and Scripps decided in 1979 to continue CalCOFI as a long-term marine
resources monitoring and research program (Radovich, 1982). The scope
of and funding for the program have been greatly reduced in recent years
(Figure 4-1). Fisheries and oceanographic data continue to be entered
into the CaICOFI online data system at the Southwest Fisheries Center
in La Jolla. This system contains a large-scale, multivariate time series of
physical, chemical, biological, and meteorological data from approximately
40,000 stations and 300 cruises in the eastern North Pacific Ocean, collected
since 1949.
    Cooperation with scientists from Mexican institutions remains an im-
portant part of the CalCOFI program. This includes joint scientific sym-
posia and cooperative studies of anchovy abundance and sardine spawning
stocks. In addition, Mexico's fishery agency, the Secretariat de Pesca, has
expressed interest in funding a reestablishment of the CalCOFI time series
transects in Mexican waters that were discontinued several years ago.


    Kelp Bed Monitoring
    Kelp beds along the California coast represent both a recreational and
a commercial resource. Because of kelp's unique characteristics, separate
programs have been instituted to monitor this resource. The California





                                   77

  1250                               1200
          I     I       I     IIIIII
                                    POINT CONCEPTION    CALCOfI PATTERN   350


                         60                        .35   '




                   8o.~oo  _^   ~ .70  /   .53 J '~ .R~ -~:7SAN DIEGO-
            s,.o 40 o.-









30ï¿½ s                                                                  340
         93.120
          I     I       I      I      I      I      I       I      I
 1250                               1200
FIGURE 4-1 Location of the 1987 field survey stations sampled by CalCOFI during
quarterly cruises. Station numbers and a typical cruise track are also shown.



Department of Fish and Game has conducted quarterly aerial surveys of
kelp beds in Los Angeles County since 1974. Since 1987, these overflights
have been extended south to San Onofre, near San Clemente. The goal of
this program is to document fluctuations in bed size, and short-term studies
have been conducted at the offshore islands and north of Los Angeles on
special occasions.
    In addition to these aerial surveys, diving surveys have been carried
out since 1977 at five sites around the Palos Verdes Peninsula as part of the
Nearshore Sportfish Habitat Evaluation Program. The goal is to increase
understanding of kelp bed ecology.
    In San Diego County aerial surveys have been carried out quarterly
since 1967 by Dr. Wheeler North of the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena. These data are used by the six municipal dischargers in the
county to fulfill NPDES monitoring requirements.
    The Kelco Co. of San Diego compiles kelp harvest data by month and
by kelp bed. However, only total annual values are available to the public
due to lease agreements between Kelco and the state.





                                  78

    Noncommercial Resources
    Another type of resource monitoring is mandated by Title III of
the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act (MPRSA) in the
Channel Islands National Park At the national park, long-term, time
series monitoring is used to assess and maintain the ecological conditions
(National Park Service, 1984). The main focus of the monitoring, much of
it done with volunteers, is to determine the population dynamics and long-
term environmental trends for key species of marine plants and animals in
the park
    The National Estuarine Reserve Research Program of the Coastal
Zone Management Act (CZMA) mandates research and monitoring pro-
grams in designated estuaries. In fiscal year 1988, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) initiated a competitive grants
program for studies in the 17 designated national estuarine reserves. The
Tijuana River estuary is the only national estuarine reserve in the Southern
California Bight area. Research and monitoring will be focused in five
areas:
    1.  water management-the relationship between freshwater inflow
and estuarine productivity;
    2. sediment management-the effects of different types of sediments
and sedimentation processes on estuaries;
    3.  nutrients and other chemical inputs-effects of anthropogenic
inputs on estuaries;
    4.  coupling of primary and secondary productivity-nature of estu-
arine food webs and energy flows; and
    5.  estuarine fishery habitat requirements-values of estuaries as nurs-
ery areas for commercial and recreational species.
    In the case of the Tijuana River estuary, these data will be extremely
useful in influencing the design of sewage management strategies for Ti-
juana, Mexico (see "The U.S.-Mexican Sewage Contamination Problem,"
Chapter 2).

              Water Quality Monitoring for Public Health
    The California Health and Safety Code specifies that the State Depart-
ment of Health Services is responsible for supervising sanitation, health-
fulness, and safety of public beaches and public water contact areas of the
state's bays and ocean waters. The State Department of Health Services
may delegate some monitoring and enforcement activities to the county
health services departments. When a public beach or water contact sports
area fails to meet standards, the local health officer or the State Depart-
ment of Health Services, after considering the causes of the failure, may





                                   79

post the area with warning signs or otherwise restrict use of the area until
corrective action has been taken and the two following standards are met:
     1. physical-no sewage sludge, grease, or other physical evidence of
sewage discharge shall be visible at any time on any public beaches or
contact sports areas; and
     2. bacteriological-samples of water at a public beach or water contact
sports area shall have a most probable number (MPN) of coliform bacteria
less than 1,000 per 10 ml, provided that no more than 20 percent of the
samples at any station in a 30-day period exceed 1,000 per 10 ml, and
provided further that no single sample, when verified by a repeated sample
taken within 48 hours, shall exceed 10,000 per 10 ml.
    The monitoring programs performed by county health agencies in
support of these management activities are of two types: (1) routine
bacteriological sampling, and (2) bacteriological sampling following a waste
discharge into recreational waters. Special studies are also carried out by
county health agencies. However, there are no health monitoring programs
targeted specifically at human health effects (e.g., gastroenteritis) related
directly to water-contact sports.
    Orange County has performed a monitoring program in recreational
waters for several years. Los Angeles County is now monitoring routinely.
In San Diego County, monitoring is performed along the shore at four
sewage treatment plant ocean outfall sites: city of Oceanside, Encina Water
Pollution Control Facility, San Elijo Water Pollution Control Facility, and
city of San Diego. The outfall from the Point Loma Plant was constructed
before kelp beds were included as water contact sports areas and the
treatment plant is experiencing difficulty meeting bacterial standards at the
outer perimeter of the kelp beds.
    For over 30 years, the San Diego County Department of Health
Services has performed beach and bay surveys annually. About 60 stations
are usually sampled on these surveys. From three to five samples are
collected at each station in April and May of each year. In addition, surveys
of 40 stations, with a single sample from each station, are performed in
early July and September. Many of these stations are interspersed with the
shoreline stations sampled by the dischargers.
    A routine weekly survey of water quality in Mission Bay was started
in 1977 and continued through January 1987. The city of San Diego has
replaced it with a more intensive monitoring program with more stations
sampled more frequently. This monitoring program was initiated voluntarily
by the city because of strong public concern about poor water quality. The
data collected in all these monitoring activities is shared with the State
Department of Health Services, regional water quality control boards, and
other state and federal agencies concerned about recreational water quality.





                                  80

             National and Statewide Monitoring ProgramsJ

    NOAAs National Mussel Watch Program and National Status and
RIends Program represent national monitoring programs that have included
sampling and measurement stations within the Southern California Bight.
While the numbers of stations are too few to present a comprehensive
picture of contaminant levels in the bight, they do provide a basis for
making comparisons with contaminant levels in other parts of the country.
    The original National Mussel Watch Program, developed by Dr. Ed-
ward Goldberg of Scripps and 10 other principal investigators, was first
funded by EPA in 1976. Mussels and oysters were sampled at approximately
78 coastal and estuarine stations along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts
of the United States in 1976, and again in 1977/1978. There were eight
stations in the Southern California Bight. Mussel tissues were analyzed for
six metals, three radionuclides, DDT (and its breakdown products), PCBs,
and petroleum hydrocarbons (Goldberg et al., 1978a). 'Ibtal funding for
the program was about $400,000 per year. The national program was not               4
continued past 1978, but several local programs were continued.
    In 1984, NOAAs Ocean Assessments Division initiated the National4
Status and [Trends Program that includes a National Benthic Surveillance
Project and a Mussel Watch Project (NOAA, 1987). In the Benthic Surveil-
lance Project, sediments and demersal fish have been collected annually
since 1984 from 50 sites along the U.S. coast, including Alaska. In the
Mussel Watch Project, mussel and oyster samples have been collected once
each year since 1986 from 150 sites along the U.S. coast, including Alaska
and Hawaii. Sediments are also collected at many of the Mussel Watch
stations. There are 6 Benthic Surveillance stations and 16 Mussel Watch
stations in the Southern California Bight (Figure 4-2). An extensive suite of
metals (17), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (18), pesticides (15), and
PCBs is analyzed in the animal tissues and sediment samples. In addition,
the fish are examined for diseases and histopathological lesions.
    The overall objective of the National Status and Trends Program is
to assess and document the status of coastal and estuarine environments.4
Specifically, the program is intended to define the geographic distribution
of contaminant concentrations in biological tissues and in sediments from
U.S. coastal and estuarine waters, determine temporal changes in those
concentrations, and document biological responses to contamination (e.g.,
Malins et al., 1986). This information will be used to make decisions about
the use and allocation of resources in the nation's coastal and estuarine
regions.
    Since 1976, the California Department of Fish and Game, under an
interagency agreement with the California State Water Resources Control
Board, has performed a Mussel Watch Program for monitoring marine and











                                                                                * NS&T Mussel Watch Site              O  ///
                    Pt. Conception                                                  * NS&T Benthic Surveillance Site          
                                          Satrrbabra                              A State Mussel Watch Reference Site
                                                                               a State Mussel Watch Survey Site

                                                       Pt. Hueneme   
                                                                 Pt. Mugu            LOS ANGELES

           -340ï¿½                                Pt um                              Marina del Rey                                       -

              Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary                                 mLos Alamitos Bay 
                                                                                     \AAnSeal   Beach
                                                                                         *     ,Newport

                                                                     _ 5 ~ ~                      '~Q~~Dana Point
                                                                                 db                                                                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~00

                                                                                t%
                                                  Santa Barbara Island   '1\

                                                   %<~~ ~             Santa Catalina Island                      Oceanside
                                      San Nicolas Island
           _33 ï¿½
                               -                                   ~LaJolla
                                                                            N.~                                   ~_  SAN DIEGO
                                                ,I  San Clemente Island
               0 63 mi
                                             (100 krnm)                                                                        U.SA
                                I I                                                                                            I0I170 Mï¿½"'
                                              120ï¿½            t tl~~~~o                      t t,8ï¿½                      t; .sï¿½t7ï¿½ tlex.

FIGURE 4-2 Locations of the NOAA National Status and BTends' Mussel Watch, and benthic surveillance sampling stations and the
California Mussel Watch reference and survey sampling sites in the Southern California Bight. All California Mussel Watch Survey sites include
several mussel sampling or transplant stations.





                                   82

estuarine waters (Stephenson et al., 1987). Its purpose is to provide the
state board and six coastal regional boards with an ongoing assessment of
the geographic and temporal trends in levels of chemical contamination in
coastal waters. The state's Mussel Watch Program is somewhat dlifferent
than the national program in that it includes only five reference stations
and several site-specific "hot spot" survey sites.
    The latter may change from year to year. Resident mussels are used at
the reference sites, but transplanted mussels or the Asiatic clam, Corbicula
fluminea, are used at most site-specific stations. The two reference stations
in the Southern California Bight are at Palos Verdes (Royal Palms State
Park) and Oceanside.  They are also National Mussel Watch sampling             
sites, providing an opportunity for intercalibration of results from the two         1
programs. In 1986-1987, 11 site-specific surveys were performed in the
Southern California Bight (Figure 4-2). These studies were performed at
one or more locations inside harbors, marinas, or enclosed bays. All but
two of the site-specific surveys were designed to collect baseline estuarine
data. The survey in Los Angeles/Long Beach harbors was to document
the levels of DDT, PCBs, and metals; the survey in San Diego Bay was
intended to assess the level of contamination of PCBs, silver, copper, and 
zinc.                                                                                '


                   Citizen and Community Monitoring
    Interest in the bight and its resources by community and environ-
mental groups has extended to voluntary participation in monitoring and
research programs. Three examples of these efforts have provided useful
information.
    Over 200 organizations and their personnel, mostly volunteers, monitor
marine mammal strandings along the California coast as part of the Ma-I
rine Mammal Stranding Network. The data generated by the Network are
collected and managed by NOAAs Southwest Fisheries Center in La Jolla.I
Notification of strandings has been useful to scientists studying chemical
contamination, diseases, and population trends of marine mammals (Sea-
gars et al., 1986).
    Volunteer reporting of physical evidence of sewage entering recre-
ational waters has provided local health departments with timely infor-
mation needed to determine whether to close recreational beaches and
swimming areas.
    Finally, annual volunteer beach cleanups coordinated by the California
Coastal Commission have resulted in estimates of the type and quantity of
plastic debris littering beaches. Such information has proven useful enough
that the Center for Marine Education in Washington, D. C. plans to develop
a uniform data reporting system for beach cleanups nationwide. These data





                                   83

will help in monitoring the magnitude of the plastic debris problem, as well
as the effectiveness of source control and recycling programs. These efforts
are supported officially, since Section 2204 of the 1987 Marine Plastic
Pollution Research and Control Act directs the Secretary of Commerce,
in cooperation with EPA, to encourage the formation of volunteer groups,
to be designated as "Citizen Pollution Patrols," to assist in monitoring,
reporting, cleanup, and prevention of ocean and shoreline pollution (1987
Marine Plastic Pollution Research and Control Act included as Title II in
the U.S. Japan Fishery Agreement Approval Act of 1987).

                        Monitoring Expenditures
    Marine monitoring programs are expensive, primarily due to staffing
needs. Trained scientists and technicians are required to conduct field
sampling, perform laboratory analyses, interpret resulting data, and write
reports. Many activities involved in monitoring, such as benthic infaunal
analysis and analytical chemistry, are labor-intensive.  Tetra Tech (1984)
estimated the costs to perform representative monitoring activities to be:
    ï¿½ $200 to $1,200 for a single benthic infaunal analysis; and
    ï¿½  $920 to $2,300 for a single priority pollutant scan of sediments.
    These estimates are low compared to current rates, but they do show
that monitoring is not cheap. In the Orange County 301(h) monitoring
program, 300 benthic infaunal samples and 196 sediment chemistry samples
are analyzed each year. Assuming that each benthic sample costs $600 and
each chemistry sample costs $1,500 to analyze, the total cost per year to
analyze these samples alone is $474,000.
    Equipment and facilities that must be purchased are also costly. A
good gas chromatograph, needed to measure PCBs, DDT, and other or-
ganic contaminants, may cost $10,000 to $50,000. An atomic absorption
spectrophotometer, used to analyze metals, will have a similar cost. Re-
search vessels equipped for accurate navigation and for collecting diverse
sample types may cost $2,000 to $5,000 per day for an offshore vessel and
$500 to $1,000 per day for a smaller vessel suitable for sampling close to
shore.
    Table 4-7 summarizes estimated costs incurred during the last five
years in different types of monitoring in the Southern California Bight.
This summary is incomplete, since it does not include several voluntary
(nonmandated) monitoring programs and research efforts performed by
different dischargers, environmental agencies, or universities. In addition,
the costs of effluent monitoring activities are probably under-recorded, since
they often are not consolidated with receiving water monitoring budgets.
     Facilities and overhead costs for those aspects of monitoring performed






                                             84

TABLE 4-7 Estimated Costs for Monitoring Programs in the Southern Califomrnia Bight


Program/location               Costs in thousands of dollars

                               1983      1984      1985        1986    1987


Waste treatment plants
 Point Loma                    496        766      1,129      1,935     1,332
 CSD Orange County             270        269      1,206      1,894    1,954
 CSD Los Angeles County
    --required                 350        373       351        434       750
     --voluntary                450       503        479        522       350
 Los Angeles City
    Hyperion                   530        583       767        809       890
 Aliso, South Laguna
    Beach                       ---        43        44         33        34
 Oxnard                         ---        ---      103        214       277
 SERRA, Dana Point              ---        31        24          27       31
 San Elijo                      ---        ---       ---         ---      32
 Encina                          5          5         8         135      134
 Goleta                          14        17        47         170      270
 E1 Estero                      ---       ---        ---                  50

Electricity generating
 plants
 San Onofre nuclear
    plant, Southern
    California Edison,
    required and
    voluntary                 1,100     1,100     1,100       1,100     1,100
 San Onofre, Marine
    Review Committee         6,000      6,000     6,000       6,000    6,000
 Southern California
    Edison, 7 generating
    stations
     --full program             540       540        540        540       540
     --fish and bioassay        200       200        200        200       200
 Scattergood Generating
    Station                     ---        ---       12.5        12.5     ---
  Encina, San Diego Gas
    and Electric                ---       ---        ---         ---      25
 Thermal outfalls               ---        ---       ---         ---     200
 Redondo Harbor                 ---        ---       ---         ---      20

Industrial discharges
 THUMS                          ---       ---

Natural resources
 Channel Islands                ---        ---       ---         ---      45
 CalCOFI (based on 60
    days at sea, $9,000/
    day ship time)              ---        ---       ---         ---     540
 State mussel watch            325        328       331        334       340





                                   85

TABLE 4-7 Continued

Program/location        Costs in thousands of dollars
                        1983    1984    1985     1986   1987

 California Fish and Game
   Pendleton reef        ---     ---     ---      ---    280
    1900s                 ---     ---     --- .            530
   pelagic fish          ---     ---     ---.             175
   party boat survey     ---     ---     ---       ---     55
    sportfish management  ---.........                     360
   fishery assessment    ---     ---     ---              800
Pacific Marine Fisheries
 committee recreational
 fishery statistics      ---      ---     ---      ---    250
Public health
 Long Beach              ---      ---     ---      --      80
 Orange County           ---      ---     ---      ---    150
 San Diego               ---      ---     ---      .       80
Total                                                    17,874

--- data not available.
SOURCE: SCCWRP, 1988.


in-house by municipal wastewater treatment plants and industrial discharg-
ers usually are not reported. While an accurate accounting of overhead
costs is not available, these have been estimated to be equivalent to the
direct costs, effectively doubling the total. Expenses incurred by county
public works departments in monitoring chemicals in stormwater runoff are
also not included in Thble 4-7. Costs for the NOAA Status and Trends
(Mussel Watch) monitoring of mussels, sediments, and fish in the bight are
not included. (The estimated cost for sampling all stations in the bight and
analyzing the samples is $175,000 per year.) Despite these omissions, the
costs summarized in Thble 4-7 do give a rough impression of the minimum
level of expenses incurred in monitoring water quality, natural resources,
and public health.
     Tbble 4-7 reveals some important facts. TIbtal estimated costs in 1987
for all monitoring in the bight are over $17 million. Because of the large
budget of the Marine Review Committee's study of SONGS (ending in
1989), monitoring costs for the electric utilities are higher in this year
than for the municipal wastewater treatment plants. Among the treatment
plants, the most expensive monitoring program, at nearly $2 million per
year, is the 301(h) monitoring program being performed by the County
Sanitation Districts of Orange County. Thtal natural resource assessments





                                   86

cost about $3.3 million per year, while public health monitoring by the
separate counties costs about $310,000 per year.
    Of the total annual monitoring expenses of over $17 million in the
Southern California Bight, nearly 80 percent are borne by the public sector.
Much of the remainder is spent by the California Department of Fish and
Game for marine resource monitoring.

                   Summary of Monitoring Activities
    The review of monitoring activities in the Southern California Bight
highlighted several important features that will be treated in more detail
in the analysis of monitoring (Chapter 6). For the most part, monitoring
is performed in response to permit requirements that regulate discharge
activities. There are many agencies, federal, state, and local, involved
in establishing standards and regulations under which these permits are
administered. Despite the many agencies and programs, there is no overall
coordination of monitoring in the bight. There is, however, cooperation
among agencies that jointly regulate specific discharges such as the Hyperion
outfall.
    Individual monitoring programs are carefully carried out using state-of-
the-art methods, and the quality of the resulting data is typically very high.
Finally, Table 4-7 reveals that, with the exception of the recently ended
Marine Review Committee program at San Onofre, the bulk of monitor-
ing funds are devoted to measuring the effects of municipal wastewater
discharge.

                      THE RESEARCH SECTOR
    A great deal of research is performed in the bight by federal, state,
and local agencies, and by universities and private industry. Some of this
research is oriented specifically toward environmental problems (such as
the effects of municipal wastewater outfalls) that are also addressed by
monitoring programs. Other research is oriented toward more general
issues in oceanography and marine ecology.
    Research results can benefit monitoring programs by:
    * increasing understanding of the marine environment and thereby
enhancing the ability to predict, measure, and assess human impacts;
    * identifying physical, chemical, or biological changes that are bet-
ter indicators of pollution impacts than the parameters currently used in
monitoring programs;
    *  providing information on the character and variability of natural
processes in the marine environment that can be used as references against
which to compare changes due to human activity;





                                  87

       establishing a link or correlation between a parameter measured in
a monitoring program and an adverse outcome of concern to society (e.g.,
link between fecal coliforms and disease);
      determining whether measurements made in monitoring programs
provide meaningful assessments of the health of the marine environment
and the nature of human impacts on it; and
    * developing new techniques and instrumentation for use in moni-
toring programs.

    The research sector is even more diverse than the monitoring sector,
with a wide variety of programs that span the range from large-scale studies
carried out by multidisciplinary research groups to narrowly focused studies
performed by individual scientists. The following sections describe repre-
sentative research activities sponsored by federal, state, and local agencies,
universities, and private industry. This is not meant to be an exhaustive
listing of programs and certainly does not come close to describing all the
research carried out in the bight.


                           Federal Agencies

    Marine research in the bight is sponsored by the National Science
Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Minerals Man-
agement Service (MMS), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Fish
and Wildlife Service (FWS).
    The NSF funds individual investigators as well as research programs
and institutes at universities throughout the bight. This research is described
more completely in the section below on university research.
    NOAA funds several important programs in the bight. The National
Status and 'fends Program was described above as part of the monitoring
sector. In addition, NOAA funds the National Marine Fisheries Service
(NMFS) and the Sea Grant College Program.
    NMFS performs studies of the biology of commercially important
fish species and of the relationships between stocks of these species and
the physical and chemical oceanography of the bight. Such studies in-
clude investigations of habitat requirements, reproduction, feeding biology,
population dynamics, geographic distribution, and response to contami-
nants. NMFS is also an active participant in the CalCOFI program, which
combines monitoring and research focused on commercial fisheries (see
Historical Monitoring and the CalCOFI Program above). Because of its
long history, archived samples from the CalCOFI program have proven
valuable in studies of trends of contaminants such as DDT







    NOAA also funds the Sea Grant College Program, which is adminis-
tered through the University of California. The federal Sea Grant legisla-
tion requires that at least one-third of the total federal funds received by
each program be matched with local (nonfederal) funds. Since 1973, the
state of California has made successive five-year commitments to provide
up to two-thirds of the required matching funds (University of California,
1989). Sea Grant studies have addressed a wide variety of coastal prob-
lems, including, at present, the functioning of wetlands, physical processes
in the coastal zone, aquaculture, marine products chemistry, and ocean
engineering.
    The U.S. EPA funds research targeted at specific environmental prob-
lems. This research is not extensive compared to that carried out by other
agencies, since EPA's regional activities are predominantly enforcement re-
lated. As an example of such targeted research, EPA supported a study in
1980 to investigate fish catch and consumption among population subgroups
in the Los Angeles area. The study was designed to furnish information
useful in formulating local regulatory approaches, and was motivated by
awareness that certain parts of the local population consume larger than
average amounts of locally caught seafood containing elevated concentra-
tions of DDT and PCBs (Puffer et al., 1982, 1983; Puffer and Gossett,
1983; Gossett et al., 1983). In addition, research carried out at the various
EPA research laboratories is often relevant to environmental issues in the
Southern California Bight.
    The Pacific Outer Continental Shelf Region of the MMS funds an
Environmental Studies Program (established in 1973) designed to provide
basic information needed to make management decisions about the outer
continental shelf (F Piltz, personal communication; Piltz, 1990; MMS,
1990). Although most of this region lies outside the boundary of the
bight, some portions of these studies are carried out inside it. Southern
California region studies have investigated air quality, potential toxicity of
oil to seabirds and marine mammals, adaptation of marine organisms to
chronic exposure to petroleum hydrocarbons, and the effects of geophysical
acoustic survey operations on important commercial fisheries. In addition,
MMS has carried out large-scale reconnaissance of benthic hard- and
soft-bottom communities and assessments of long-term changes in benthic
communities in oil and gas development areas. Some MMS studies (e.g.,
Fauchald and Jones, 1978) are notable for their wide geographic coverage
and commitment to long-term data collection.
    The Ecological Research Division of DOE is sponsoring three regional
studies in the bight. One of these, the California Basin Study (CaBS), be-
gun in 1985, is a multidisciplinary effort to examine and understand the
production, transport, and ultimate fate of biogenic particulates and the
energy-related products (e.g., radionuclides) associated with them. One of





                                  89

the major goals of CaBS is to develop a carbon budget for the Southern Cal-
ifornia Bight that incorporates the contributions of bacteria, phytoplankton,
and zooplankton.
    The U.S. FWS Biological Services Program has performed an ecolog-
ical inventory of the entire Pacific coast, including the bight. The FWS
has published several reports on critical habitats within the bight, including
kelp forests and coastal marshes, and has developed a series of profiles of
environmental requirements for coastal fishes and invertebrates.


                             State Agencies

    Marine research in the bight is sponsored by the California Depart-
ment of Fish and Game, the Water Resources Control Board, and the
Department of Health Services. In addition, state funds contribute to the
support of the Sea Grant College Program.
    The Marine Resources Branch of the Department of Fish and Game
conducts research designed to protect and enhance specific fishery re-
sources. The department has studied the effectiveness of artificial reefs in
enhancing fish stocks and evaluated various methods for rehabilitating kelp
beds. In addition, the department participates in funding the CalCOFI
program, which investigates the biology of commercial fisheries.
    The State Water Resources Control Board funds research specifically
related to identifying environmental problems and developing water and
sediment quality criteria and regulatory standards. For example, the board
has supported a survey of PAH levels throughout the bight, followed by lab-
oratory studies of PAH uptake and toxicity. The board has also requested
studies of sediment transport and alternative methods of establishing sedi-
ment quality criteria.
    The California Department of Health Services has examined levels
of chemical contamination in fish caught in Santa Monica Bay and Los
Angeles and Long Beach harbors. The results of this investigation will be
useful to EPA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in revising
action limits for some highly nonpolar organic contaminants, such as DDT
and PCBs. These are of special concern because of their high potential for
bioaccumulation and toxicity.


                             Local Agencies

    The single largest and most focused body of research on pollution
problems in the bight is that performed by the municipal and regional sani-
tation agencies and the research organization they jointly fund, the Southern
California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP). In addition, local





                                  90

public health departments conduct research into the health effects of ma-
rine contamination and the regional water quality control boards carry out
occasional studies targeted at the development of regulatory criteria.
    The four major sanitation agencies in the bight all maintain active
marine research programs that are beyond the activities mandated by
their discharge permits. These four agencies are Los Angeles City, the
County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, the County Sanitation
Districts of Orange County, and San Diego City. These agencies typically
fund research on questions that are relevant to the management of their
discharges and the understanding or mitigation of environmental impacts.
They consider this research necessary to answer questions that are not
addressed by mandated monitoring programs. Research has included both
field and modeling studies of sediment transport and plume behavior, as
well as investigations of nutrient dynamics in the water column, sediment
toxicity, benthic community structure, and kelp bed ecology. In conjunction
with SCCWRP, Los Angeles City is currently conducting an experimental
study of the rate and character of ecological recovery around the city's
sludge outfall, which suspended discharge operations in November 1987.
In addition to these active research programs, all discharge agencies in the
Southern California Bight belong to the Southern California Association
of Marine Invertebrate Taxonomists (SCAMIT). This organization works
to ensure that all studies use a consistent, standardized, and up-to-date
species list of marine invertebrates. This list has proved invaluable in
regional analyses, which otherwise would have been impossible to perform.
Discharge agencies also are active members of the Southern California
Environmental Chemists Society (SCECS), which performs an analogous
function for environmental chemistry.
    SCCWRP was founded in 1969 with the aim of conducting both basic
and applied marine research relevant to the discharge of municipal wastew-
ater to the bight. At present, SCCWRP is supported by a yearly allocation
from the seven major municipal dischargers in the bight, and to a lesser
extent by contract funds from state and federal agencies. SCCWRP in-
vestigates generic problems of interest to all the dischargers, develops and
refines new methods, and performs regional analyses that are beyond the
scope of individual dischargers. SCCWRP's work has resulted in important
additions to knowledge about the marine environment and improvements
to monitoring practice. For instance, SCCWRP researchers have evaluated
alternative methods for sampling benthic communities and developed the
Infaunal Trophic Index for characterizing the degree of change in benthic
communities. They have also investigated histopathological and biochem-
ical indicators of pollutant stress in marine species, documented pollution
induced changes in reproduction of key fish species, and monitored re-
gional trends in the incidence of effects such as fin rot and tumors on






                                                 91

         fish.  SCCWRP  has performed  a vital function because of its ability to
         collect and integrate data from all the municipal dischargers in the bight.
         As a result, SCCWRP has been able to complete significant analyses of
         bightwide patterns and trends in contamination and environmental change.
         The periodic SCCWRP  Report series is available to the public on request.
              County health departments and municipal governments in the bight
         have carried out periodic research studies to assess the likelihood of specific
         health effects from environmental contamination. For example, the Los
         Angeles County Department of Health Services has carried out lifeguard
         surveys in response to inquiries about the health of lifeguards.' These
         studies were stimulated in part by the finding that seven lifeguards in
         the Los Angeles area had developed cancer. The department is currently
         planning an additional epidemiological study of lifeguards that will focus
         on short-term health outcomes. Lifeguards were chosen as a sentinel group
         for monitoring possible adverse health outcomes due to marine pollution
         because they are more heavily and consistently exposed than the general
         public to contaminants in the ocean. The department is also investigating
         the relationship between consumption of ocean fish and concentrations of
         DDT, DDE, and PCBs in the milk of lactating mothers.2 Another example
         of research performed by local agencies is the city of San Diego's study
         to assess health risks from the municipal wastewater discharge at Point




1         1ft~In 1982, following notification that seven lifeguards in the Los Angeles area had developed
         cancer, Dr. Thomas Mack of the University of Southern California Cancer Surveillance Program
         undertook a study of cancer prevalence in Los Angeles County. He concluded that, although the
         number of cancer cases was higher than predicted, the elevation was not statistically significant.
         Neither was there evidence of a causal link between work as a lifeguard near Santa Monica beach
         and the subsequent appearance of cancer. In addition to these studies, investigations by the
         Department of Health Services have shown that industrial health claims demonstrate no clear
         pattern of illness in relation to where the lifeguards work. Prevalence of hepatitis A serology
         among lifeguards does not differ from control populations.
         2Previous mammal studies showed that PCBs and DDT adversely affect neonatal development
         at doses that might be encountered by a small percentage of people eating contaminated fish
         from the bight (Allen and Barsotti, 1976). To address this concern, the Department of Health
         Services has selected approximately 50 post-partum breast-feeding women, predominantly from
         lower socioeconomic groups, as subjects in a study of the relationship between consumption
         of ocean fish and concentrations of DDT, DDE, and PCBs in breast milk. Preliminary results
         indicate that PCB concentrations (measured on a fat basis) are typically between 0.1 and 0.3
         ppm. There are no values over 0.9 ppm. DDT is present in breast milk at concentrations from 1
         to 5 ppm, with a few values over 10 ppm as measured on a lipid basis. It appears that the major
         source of PCBs in these women is the consumption of fishery products from the bight. However,
         there is an association between prior residence in Mexico or Central America and elevated (5
         ppm or higher) concentrations of DDE in breast milk. All concentrations measured to date are
         well below the FDA action limits for whole milk (on a whole milk basis).






                                     92

Loma to recreational divers who use the Point Loma kelp bed or consume
seafood caught there.3
    The regional water quality control boards, which act independently
of the state board, occasionally support research targeted at specific local
problems. As one example, the Los Angeles board recently funded a study
of contaminants in river runoff in the Los Angeles basin.


                                Universities

    The are more than 200 academic institutions in the region of the
Southern California Bight. Some of these have extensive and diverse
marine research programs, while others may have only one or a few marine
scientists active in particular specialties. The great number and wide variety
of the academic marine research programs carried out in the bight make
it impossible to review this work in detail. The following paragraphs
therefore summarize only those programs that are large, well known, or
have contributed significantly to knowledge about the marine environment
and environmental effects.
    The Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of Cali-
fornia (UC) system carries out the largest and most varied set of marine
research programs in the bight. Scripps is one of the largest oceanographic
institutions in the country. It coordinates Sea Grant projects carried out
by schools in the UC system and is a member of the University National
Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS), partially funded by the Na-
tional Science Foundation. The research performed at Scripps is worldwide
in scope and the institution maintains a fleet of oceangoing research vessels.
However, a significant proportion of this work is focused on the California
Current system and the Southern California Bight.
    Scripps has several large research groups that focus on particular as-
pects of marine studies. The Food Chain Research Group's focus is the food
web dynamics and biogeochemical cycles of plankton, and the nature of
environmental effects on these. The Marine Life Research Group focuses
on understanding the distribution and variability of the living resources
of the California Current system. This research is carried out primarily

3 Between June and September 1986, 346 recruited divers made 1,371 dives in the Pt. Loma kelp
bed. Over 90 percent of the divers took seafood from the kelp bed and 25 percent of those who
ate the seafood ate it raw. Raw seafood was consumed underwater by 18 percent of the divers.
Twelve illnesses that fit the highly credible gastrointestinal symptoms (HCGI) as defined by EPA
were reported. If all reported HCGI illnesses were genuine, then there were eight HCGI cases
per 1,000 divers. The new EPA Water Contact Criteria that use enterococcus as the indicator
organism for marine waters set a maximum allowable geometric mean enterococcus concentra-
tion that would permit an estimated 19 illnesses per 1,000 swimmers. The apparent health risk
to divers in the Pt. Loma kelp bed is thus relatively low.





                                   93

in conjunction with the CalCOFI Program. The Center for Coastal Stud-
ies emphasizes investigations of sedimentology and physical and chemical
oceanography in the coastal zone. The goal of these studies is to increase
the ability to assess and predict the effects of human activity in the coastal
environment. In addition to these large groups, individual investigators at
Scripps carry out research on the physical and chemical oceanography of the
bight, as well as on the biology of kelp bed communities, fish populations,
and other resources.
    The University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) supports the
Marine Science Institute and the Coastal Research Center. These research
groups carry out basic and applied studies on specific marine resources such
as kelp beds and fish stocks, as well as on more general problems such as the
toxicity of pollutants. The Center for Remote Sensing and Environmental
Optics is developing methods for applying remote sensing (i.e., satellite
imagery) technology to the assessment of patterns and processes in the
marine environment.
    The University of Southern California (USC), a private institution in
Los Angeles that is designated as a Sea Grant Institutional Program and is
part of UNOLS, operates the Santa Catalina Island Marine Science Center.
Historically, the USC Allan Hancock Foundation conducted pioneering
programs emphasizing the coastal sedimentology and benthic ecology of
the bight. USC has also conducted diverse applied studies, such as baseline
inventories in marinas, harbors, and nearshore and continental shelf waters,
and environmental assessments in support of the siting of the Hyperion
Ieatment Plant deepwater outfall and the Terminal Island `TIeatment Plant
outfall. USC has also cooperated with the County Sanitation Districts of
Los Angeles County in studies of the plume from the districts' White
Point outfall. Other studies performed by USC researchers have examined
the effects of oil seeps, the Santa Barbara oil spill, harbor dredging, and
disposal of fish processing wastes.
    The California State University (CSU) system, originally termed the
State College system, is distinct from the University of California system.
In the Los Angeles area, the State University system operates the Southern
California Ocean Studies Consortium (SCOSC), which coordinates marine
research, education, and community service programs at several state uni-
versity campuses. The consortium recently completed a baseline biological
survey for the Terminal Island dry bulk handling terminal in Los Ange-
les Harbor. Prior to and since the formation of SCOSC, faculty at CSU
Long Beach have studied the effects of pollution on nearshore benthos
and on reproduction of benthic invertebrates and have developed alter-
native bioassay/toxicity testing techniques. Faculty at CSU Fullerton and
CSU Northridge have focused on the ichthyology of wetlands and embay-
ments. Researchers at San Diego State University have performed studies





                                   94

of wetlands degradation and restoration and of the impacts of sewage from
Mexico on the Tijuana estuary.
    The California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) supports the Environ-
mental Engineering Program and the Environmental Quality Laboratory.
Scientists in these two groups have been involved in the design of major
wastewater outfalls in the bight and in developing design modifications for
power plant cooling-water intakes that drastically reduced the numbers of
fish taken in with the cooling water. In addition, Cal Tech scientists have
studied the chemical and physical processes related to the movement and
ultimate fates of discharged materials in the bight, have examined the chem-
istry of wastewater effluent, and investigated the fractionation of sewage
sludge discharged to the ocean. For many years, Cal Tech also housed the
Kelp Habitat Improvement Project, a long-term effort to understand the
biology of kelp beds and enhance their survival and growth.
    Notable among the research programs at small colleges in the bight is
that at Occidental College, which has operated the R.V Vantuna program
for more than a decade. This ship-based program focuses on extensive otter
trawling and diver ichthyological surveys, and on research on the effects of
heated wastewater plumes from coastal power plants.


                            Private Industry
    Private industries in the bight maintain research programs that are
targeted at understanding the effects of specific discharges or other activi-
ties. With the exception of Southern California Edison's program, however,
most of these are small and narrowly focused. Since 1972, the company
has operated a research and development laboratory in Redondo Beach,
and for many years supported a program of voluntary research termed
the "Special Studies Program." These studies were carried out at SCE's
initiative in order to:
    * more clearly describe the effects of the company's permitted intake
and discharge of power plant cooling water, and
    * develop a greater understanding of the mechanisms underlying
these effects.
    Southern California Edison's research has included investigations of
the effect of chlorinated discharges and thermal stress on various life stages
of coastal fishes, fish behavior around cooling water intakes, the bightwide
distribution patterns of ichthyoplankton and adult fishes, the biology of kelp
beds, and remote sensing studies of surface-water temperature patterns
throughout the bight. An unusual aspect of much of Edison's research is its
emphasis on bightwide patterns and processes. For example, the company
has attempted to determine whether its numerous coastal power plants, in






                                    95

the aggregate, have had any effect on larval and adult fish abundance and
distribution in the bight. This orientation reflects the fact that Southern
California Edison, unlike other dischargers, operates throughout the entire
bight.

                           Research Successes
    Research programs have contributed greatly to both the evolution of
monitoring technology and to the mitigation of the impacts of human ac-
tivity in the bight. These contributions are too numerous to list completely,
but a few historical examples will indicate the breadth and importance of
the relationship between research and monitoring programs in the bight.
    For many years, scientists at USC's Allan Hancock Foundation carried
out research on the biogeography of the bight. These studies described the
fauna of the continental shelf and slope and the offshore basins. The result-
ing comprehension of zonation patterns was important in understanding the
impacts of wastewater discharge. This information was also instrumental in
determining the placement of outfalls and designing monitoring programs.
    When Southern California Edison was first constructing coastal power
plants in the bight, it worked closely with scientists and engineers at Cal
Tch to redesign cooling water intakes to reduce the numbers of fish taken
in with the cooling water (or impinged). Modeling and experimental studies
showed that fish were disoriented by the vertical flow fields around intakes.
As a result of this understanding, Southern California Edison fitted velocity
caps to all intake structures. These velocity caps create a horizontal flow
field around intakes, thus reducing the numbers of fish impinged by over
90 percent. Both the severity of the original problem and the efficacy of
the velocity caps were documented by monitoring.
    The diversion in 1971 of the County Sanitation Districts of Orange
County's wastewater discharge from a shallow inshore outfall to a deeper
outfall offshore provided a unique opportunity for research on both the
recovery and disturbance of benthic communities. Gary Smith, of Scripps,
studied the dynamics of community recovery at the old discharge site and
the progress of disturbance effects at the new outfall site (Smith, 1974).
The increased understanding of impact mechanisms that resulted from this
study was extremely valuable in the continued improvement of monitoring
around outfalls in the bight.

                              SUMMARY
    Monitoring and research programs in the Southern California Bight
are both diverse and intensive. They are carried out by a wide variety
of federal, state, and local agencies, as well as by universities and private






industry.  Virtually every aspect of the marine environment is currently 
being monitored or otherwise investigated.
    In many instances, research and monitoring activities have been closely
coordinated, with research results being used effectively to improve and re-I
fine monitoring efforts. The active marine research community in Southern
California has produced many innovations that have advanced the state of
the art in marine monitoring. In addition, the large monitoring programs
represent a valuable source of time-series data on the marine environment
in the bight.I
    One of the most striking features of the monitoring and research
system in the bight is the great number of programs carried out by an
almost equally great number of agencies, universities, and industries. This
has led to examples of interagency cooperation that could serve as a model
for other regions facing similar problems. However, it has also led to
fragmentation and a lack of integration, which has hampered monitoring
efforts. These issues and others related to the technical design of monitoring
programs will be dealt with in Chapters 5 and 6.







                                  5
                 A Framework for the
                Analysis of Monitoring














    The previous chapter documented the wide range of monitoring pro-
grams being carried out in the Southern California Bight. Because these
programs can be evaluated from many different perspectives, it is important
to clarify the criteria the panel used in its analysis of monitoring efforts.
These criteria summarize the conceptual framework developed by the par-
ent committee. They provide the basis for determining whether individual
programs, as well as the monitoring system as a whole, are effective or not,
and can be expressed as six questions:
    1. Does monitoring address clearly stated management and societal
objectives?
    2. Does monitoring address the major environmental problems facing
the bight?
    3. Do the spatial and temporal scales of monitoring reflect those of
the major environmental problems?
    4. Are the technical design and implementation of monitoring of high
quality? This includes proper statistical design of sampling and analysis,
use of state-of-the art field and laboratory techniques, and adequate links
to relevant research programs.
    5. Do monitoring programs respond in a timely way to changing
conditions and needs?
    6. Are monitoring resources allocated effectively both within and
among monitoring programs?

These criteria reflect the literature on monitoring (e.g., Hofling, 1978;
                                  97





                                   98

Green, 1979; Beanlands and Duinker, 1983; Fritz et al., 1980, NationalI
Research Council, 1986; Isom, 1986; Rosenberg et al., 1981; and Bernstein
and Zalinski, 1983, 1986) and the experience of the panel members.
    It is important to recognize that issues addressed by the evaluation
criteria are not strictly technical. This is because monitoring is defined
by and carried out within a complex context that includes the interests
and information needs of the public and the regulatory agencies and the
requirements (procedural and otherwise) of relevant laws and permits, as
well as strictly scientific and technical concerns. The analysis of monitoring
must therefore look as much at the interface between policy and technical
issues as at the technical issues themselves.
    The following sections address three areas that are especially relevant
to the analysis of monitoring and that underlie the evaluation criteria:
    ï¿½ the importance of clear objectives,
    ï¿½ the role of technical design and its statistical component, and
    ï¿½ the necessity for identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing environ-
mental problems.

                THE IMPORTANCE OF OBJECTIVES
    Monitoring programs are intended to produce information for quan-
tifying and evaluating the effects of human activity on the marine en-
vironment. Monitoring is intended to provide decision makers with the
information they need to make appropriate management decisions about
how to protect the marine environment and its resources. Ideally, these
information needs should be expressed as objectives that guide the design
and implementation of monitoring programs.
    The objectives that currently motivate monitoring programs in the bight
can be loosely structured as a hierarchy. At the highest level are broad
concerns about human health and the status of the ecosystem. Beanlands
and Duinker (1983) make the point that objectives at this level often
reflect sociopolitical values that cannot always be quantified or supported
scientifically. This, however, does not necessarily lessen their importance
or relevance as the basis of management and monitoring efforts. At the
next level are the laws and regulations that embody these concerns as
more specific objectives or requirements. At the next level are permits
for individual discharges or other activities, which in some cases contain
numerical monitoring criteria. Finally, the monitoring design itself is based
on decisions about what, specifically, to measure, when, where, and how 
often to measure it, and about what degree of uncertainty in the final
answer is acceptable. Ideally, each level should incorporate the content and

intent of the preceding level. Westman (1985) has described an analogous





                                            99

F      ~~hierarchy in terms of successively more specific and detailed goals, policies,
        strategies, and tactics.
             As the foregoing discussion implies, clear objectives are crucial for both
        the monitoring and decision-making aspects of environmental management.
        For monitoring practitioners, they direct monitoring efforts toward the
        measurement of specific parameters and of specific amounts and rates of
        change. Without such clear objectives, it is impossible to effectively use
        and power and optimization analyses. For managers and regulators, they
             poieastandard against which environmental change can be measured in
             ore odetermine if corrective action is required. It is therefore necessary
         to      c     opeeyspecify objectives at each level of the hierarchy, from broad
         public concerns to specific, numerical criteria.


                          THE ROLE OF TECHNICAL DESIGN
             Rlchnical design involves making decisions about what to monitor;
         how, when, and where to take measurements; and how to analyze and in-
         terpret the resulting data. The parent Committee on a Systems Assessment
         of Marine Environmental Monitoring developed a design methodology that
         the panel used to structure its evaluation of this aspect of monitoring in the
         Southern California Bight (Figures 5-1 to 5-4) (National Research Coun-
         cil, 1990). Figure 5-1 shows that technical design must be considered in
         relation to the initial definition of goals and objectives and the ultimate
         effective dissemination of monitoring information. Figures 5-2 to 5-4 pro-
        vide additional detail about the relationships among specific elements of
         the methodology.
         The methodology summarized in Figures 5-1 to 5-4 reflects definite concepts
         about effective monitoring design and its benefits. These concepts are not
         the only ones that could have been used to structure an evaluation of the
         technical design of monitoring programs. They do, however, reflect many
         of the important themes that recur in the literature on monitoring design.
         'Me following is a summary of these concepts:

               *Appropriate technical design ensures that data collection, analysis,
         and interpretation will address management needs and objectives. o~hch-
         nical design can be performed adequately only when objectives, problems,
         questions, or hypotheses are stated explicitly.
               *Sampling, measurement, and analysis designs should be developed
        with the goal of detecting specific kinds and amounts of change.
             * Predictions about the kinds and amounts of change expected should
         be derived from conceptual models that specify how particular human
         activities (causes) will lead to environmental impacts (effects).





                                     100

                                       Step I
                                       Define
                                Expectations and Goals
   Refine                                  I                          Step 3
 Objectives                               t                  NJ Conduct Exploratory
                                       Step 2                  Studies if Needed
                                       Define
                                   Study Strategy
                  Ref rame4I
                 Questions             Step 4
                                      Develop
                                   Sampling Design


                        No n                g

           Rethink
         Monitoring
          Approach
                                       Step 5
                                   Implement Study
                               j~~~~~~

                                       Step 6
                                  Produce Information



                                      Aequate?

                                            Yes

                                       Step 7
                                Disseminate Information


                                    Make Decisions


FIGURE 5-1  The elements of designing and implementing a monitoring program.


     a Sampling and measurement designs should account for important
sources of natural variability.
    ï¿½ Sampling and measurement designs should be evaluated before-
hand to determine their ability to detect predicted changes.
    * Analysis approaches should be selected before data collection to
correspond to the statistical assumptions of the sampling design.
    * Data base systems should make authorized versions of the data
readily available to analysts and managers, and should provide easy access
to a wide range of analysis, graphics, and reporting tools.





                                    101


     Identify Public                                         Identify Relevant
     Concerns and                                        Laws, Regulations, and
     Expectations                                               Permits














                               Focus Scientific
                               Understanding








                                  Establish
                          Environmental and Human
                              Health Objectives








FIGURE 5-2 Step 1: Defining expectations and goals of monitoring.




    The technical design process illustrated in Figures 5-1 to 5-4 furnishes
a framework for translating broad questions and objectives into specific
decisions about what to measure, where to measure it, and how many
measurements to take. Using this framework as an evaluation tool enabled
the panel to use a common set of standards in considering the technical
design of monitoring programs in the bight.





                                     102


                              Identify Resources
                                  at Risk
     Modify
   Resources

                           Develop Conceptual Model




                  No           Have Appropit                Adjust
                               Resources Been             Boundaries
                                  Selected

                                        Yes

                                  Determine
                            Appropriate Boundaries




                                  Boundaries                      j Refine
                                  Adequate?                            Model

                                       t es

                               Predict Responses
                                and/or Changes



                                     Are   d       i No

                                 Reasonable?


                                        Yes

                                   Develop
                              Testable Questions




FIGURE 5-3 Step 2: Defining study strategy.



          A FRAMEWORK FOR PRIORITIZING PROBLEMS

    As stated previously, this case study is oriented toward examining
the monitoring system in the bight as a whole. In addition to evaluating
whether individual programs meet their objectives, this necessitates de-
termining whether the entire collection of monitoring programs produces






                                     103


                       _I     Develop Testable
                                  Questions 
                                                              Quantify
                                     it =                   | Variability
                               Identify Meaningful
                               Levels of Changes
                                                             Identify Logistical
                                                               Constraints
                                 Select What
                                 to Measure

           Questions 
                   11J L            ~~Develop
                               Monitoring Design



                                   Specify
                               Statistical Models
                                                            I Conduct Power Tests
                                                              and Optimizations

                   No      /an Predicted
                              Responses Be Sen

                                        Yes

         iD~~ehnf~ical |Define Data
Design                  |      Quality Objectives


                                   Develop
                               Sampling Design



                   No             s Design
                                 Adequate?

                                        Yes


FIGURE 5-4 Step 3: Developing sampling and measurement design.





the information needed to satisfy both management and the public. The
technical design methodology described above provided a means of struc-
turing the analysis of individual programs. However, there was no similar
framework available for the overall analysis of the monitoring system. The
panel therefore adapted existing methods in order to perform a summary
assessment of environmental impacts on resources in the bight. This as-
sessment was intended to summarize the nature and severity of impacts on





                                  104

a range of important resources in the bight and was designed to help the
panel address specific questions.
    *  Does monitoring address clearly stated management and societal
objectives?
    *  Does monitoring address the major environmental problems facing
the bight?
    * Do the spatial and temporal scales of monitoring reflect those of
the major environmental problems?
    *  Are monitoring resources allocated effectively both within and
among monitoring programs?

                      The Assessment Framework                                     p
    While many useful frameworks have been proposed for environmental
assessments (see examples in Beanlands and Duinker, 1983; Westman,
1985; NRC, 1986), constructing one for monitoring in the bight in the
context of the case study presented special difficulties.  First, the goal
of the assessment was to produce a synthetic overview that would aid in
drawing conclusions about the entire monitoring system in the bight, both
technical and institutional. This is in contrast to more typical assessments
that focus only on identifying and quantifying the environmental impacts of
individual projects. Second, the time available for developing this overview
was necessarily short and the technical and financial resources available
were limited. Third, there are extensive and diverse human and natural
sources of perturbation in the bight and methods for characterizing multiple
and cumulative impacts are not well developed. For example, effects on
fish populations may derive from:
    *  coastal power plants-entrainment of larvae, impingement of adults;
    *  municipal wastewater outfalls-habitat alteration, changes in food
supply, contamination;
    *  dredged material disposal-habitat alteration, contamination;
    *  storm runoff-contamination; and
    * sport and commercial fishing-increased mortality.
    * El Nifios-changes in distribution and community structure, habitat
alterations; and
     * major storms-habitat alteration.

Such effects act on different spatial and temporal scales, and this adds to
the challenge of understanding and portraying impacts.
    To accommodate these constraints and difficulties, the panel used a
combination of matrix and ad hoc assessment methods (Westman, 1985).1

 The matrix approach was adapted from a framework developed by Clark (1986) for identifying





                                   105

The assessment produced synoptic overviews that were useful in evaluating
the overall pattern of monitoring in the bight. However, before reviewing
the assessment products and explaining the supporting detail, it is important
to understand the limitations of the matrix and ad hoc methods used. In
most cases, the limitations of each method were somewhat balanced by the
strengths of the other. The procedure described by Clark (1986) proceeds
through a series of steps that specify:
    * valued ecosystem components (VECs),
    * marine constituents (both natural ecosystem parameters and an-
thropogenic contaminants) that cause changes in the VECs, and
    * sources of natural and human-induced perturbation that create or
cause changes in these constituents, which are linked in a matrix with
specific VECs to show how they-along with contamination in the bight-
affect marine resources (Figure 5-5).
    The selection of perturbations, constituents, and VECs is necessarily
somewhat arbitrary. Given the size of the bight and the multiplicity of
resources and sources of impact, some selection among these was unavoid-
able. This selection reflects the values and biases of the panel, but the
critical reviews by experts and scientists outside the panel were designed
to balance competing points of view. However, there is no denying that
other reviewers might have generated parameters that would have led to a
different assessment.
    The matrices do not specifically identify primary, secondary, and higher
order interactions among perturbations, constituents, and VECs. This
would be a severe shortcoming if the matrices were used as a stand-alone
assessment method. In this case, however, the matrices were used as a
cross check for the conclusions derived from the ad hoc approach and to
enforce a degree of systematic thinking. While the matrices themselves do
not specify interactions, they were discussed at length during preparation
of the matrices and as part of the ad hoc approach.
    The matrix products do not quantify effects and impacts.  Rather
Figure 5-5 scales two impact attributes, the potential influence of each
source of perturbation and the degree of scientific certainty associated
with this conclusion. This is similar to the scaling of impact magnitude
and importance proposed by Leopold et al. (1971) in a similar matrix.
This subjective scaling would be a major shortcoming if the panel's intent
was to perform a damage assessment, a detailed project assessment, or a
comparison of two or more alternative development scenarios. However, in

cumulative impacts. The ad hoc portion of the assessment (Rau and Wooten, 1980) consisted
of brainstorming sessions with experts and critical review of the matrix products by individual
scientists. The matrix products were modified a number of times to incorporate feedback from
brainstorming sessions and individuals' reviews.







                                            106



             VALUED ECOSYSTEM 

                             s.                 =~  ' ï¿½  =.0         -

                                   2 E E  0                                          4 .
                                   -2 0'                                      E
    SOURCES                         |     o                                 u o  o  a " ,
    OF PERTURBATION                                             E iE                   E  
                                   ~' a=   N   02 ~            .a8 -  0  ~            I Z

         Storms                    B]           m]

         El Nisos         []d F PI W W                 !I      ?    I  W- [B ]

         Upwelling                      E ]                        E   ?   W        ]

         Basin Flushing            E]          El]                      ]

         Mass Sediment Flows       l]           W                      ]

         Blooms/Invasions                      [] i]

         Diseases                                      [    [          []       ?

         Ecological Interactions  P       ]    []           IE @ [  ]   L   E  ?  B]

         Power Plants i,                                               El  m

         Wastewater
           Outfalls               E[L          [ 0   []   ]   Bi ? [] []]
         Dredgingi                                     5  BE

         River Flow and Storm-                                         ?
             water Runoff                              []                              []

         Commercial Fishing                            F       EPI]]           Ej [i     B 

         Sport Fishing                                         1       B          

         Marine Commerce and
               Boating   [
         Habitat Loss and
           Modification                                [
         Oil Spills                ]                      []               ?  ?   i []

         Oil Seeps                               ]

         Atmospheric Input         ] ] [L]                                 []          ]


                 POTENTIAL INFLUENCE                        ASSESSMENT RELIABILITY

    E  Controlling  [E  Major  E]  Moderate   ]  Some         High        Moderate        Low
     7 - Some evidence for impact but further study needed
     Blank - no impact


FIGURE  5-5  Impacts on  the marine environment  of the Southern  California Bight.
Individual cells of the matrix illustrate the presumed relative impact of each source on
each component,  along with the associated scientific certainty.  Each column represents
cumulative impacts on individual components; each row shows the effects of individual
perturbations on all components.  This figure was used to summarize and investigate ways
of identifying and ranking impacts in the bight. SOURCE: After Clark, 1986.





                                   107

this case the panel's goal was to produce a high-level overview that would
assist in comparing the overall pattern of impacts with the overall pattern
and structure of monitoring programs. In addition, much of the background
information used in both the matrix and ad hoc efforts was derived from
extensive and quantitative research, monitoring, and modeling programs.
    The overviews that resulted from the assessment lack detail about the
nature of the effects they represent. Again, this is less of a problem given
the panel's task In fact, the high-level, summary character of the overviews
was actually helpful in elucidating the weaknesses of the existing monitoring
structure.
    The ad hoc method depends on the collected experience and insights
of the participants. As a result, conclusions are dependent not only on
the selection of participants but also on their values and biases. Under
the circumstances, the panel believed that enlisting the participation of
a cross section of scientists from the bight region was the most efficient
means of integrating the wealth of scientific and technical information
available. Involving scientists of differing affiliations helped to balance
individual values and biases. In addition, the matrix method helped to
focus, systematize, and cross check each person's opinions and judgments.
    No assessment method is perfectly objective. While quantitative mod-
els are increasingly valuable, even they depend on certain simplifying as-
sumptions and often are challenged. Similarly, even a moderately sized
monitoring program must make judgments about which aspects of the envi-
ronment to measure or ignore, since it is impossible to measure everything.
The panel used the assessment products to derive conclusions about the
structure and focus of the monitoring system in the bight. The conclusions
were judged to be robust enough to form the basis for conclusions and
recommendations, even in light of the acknowledged limitations of the
assessment methods used.


                          A Synoptic Overview
    The matrix in Figure 5-5 is a useful heuristic tool. It shows that all
ecosystem components are impacted by more than one kind of perturbation.
It also shows that perturbations typically affect more than one ecosystem
component. For example, storms affect soft benthos, kelp beds, and human
health; wastewater outfalls affect soft benthos, microheterotrophs, and
demersal fish populations.
    Figure 5-5 helps categorize the types of monitoring programs in the
bight. Some programs examine the effects of one perturbation on a single
resource. These programs focus on one cell of Figure 5-5 and are called
single-cell assessments. For example, the impingement sampling program
carried out by the Southern California Edison Company is intended to





                                  108

assess the potential impacts of coastal power plants on pelagic fish popula-
tions. Other monitoring programs examine the effects of one perturbation
on a range of resources. These programs focus on an entire row of Figure
5-5 and are called row assessments. For example, the 301(h) monitoring
program around the Orange County wastewater outfall is designed to doc-
ument the effects of the outfall on a range of resources, including soft
benthos, water quality, and demersal fish populations. Monitoring pro-
grams that consider how several perturbations, acting together, affect a
single resource would focus on an entire column of Figure 5-5 and are
called column assessments. There are no examples of such programs in the
bight, a fact which will be addressed in more detail in Chapter 6. Further,
there are no coordinated monitoring programs in the bight that focus on
the effects of two or more sources of perturbation on a range of related
resources. Such a program, for example, might document the combined
effects of fishing, power plants, and wastewater outfalls on demersal and
pelagic fish populations.
    Figure 5-5 also presents subjective judgments about the relative im-
portance and degree of scientific certainty associated with each impact. For
example, wastewater outfall impacts on soft benthos are more severe and
extensive than those from dredging. As another example, it also shows that
conclusions about kelp bed impacts are probably more reliable than those
about effects on fish eggs and larvae. Such comparisons aid in analyzing
existing monitoring programs by suggesting where further research would
be more appropriate and useful than routine monitoring. As Chapter 6
makes clear, available financial and technical resources in the bight are
not systematically allocated to research and monitoring on the basis of a
comprehensive overview like the one in Figure 5-5.
    As with Figure 5-5, Figure 5-6 is a useful heuristic tool that supplies
insights about the structure of existing monitoring programs in the bight. It
shows quite clearly that the impacts that are relatively well understood (e.g.,4
coastal power plant plumes, disposal of coarse dredged material, nutrients,
fine particles) are those whose scales are either less than or of the same
order of magnitude as those of monitoring programs. It also demonstrates
that, with the exception of the CaICOFI program, the temporal and spatial
scales of individual monitoring programs are insufficient to resolve patterns
of effects on larger scales. While the effects of scale are becoming a
matter of concern to ecologists (Wiens, 1989), Figure 5-6 demonstrates
that monitoring programs in the bight are not consistently designed with
such scale effects in mind. As Wiens (1989) points out, these effects can
be complex, and-if not considered carefully-". . . we may think we
understand the system when we have not even observed it correctly."





                                  109

                           Supporting Detail

    As the first step in the matrix assessment procedure, the effects of
the constituents on the VECs are identified (Figure 5-7), and the ways
in which sources of perturbation cause changes in these constituents are
then specified (Figure 5-8). This permits sources of perturbation to be
linked (through changes in the constituents) directly to effects on VECs
in a matrix (Figure 5-5). This in turn allowed the panel to summarize the
effects of various human and natural processes on the VECs. Finally, the
temporal and spatial scales of constituents and perturbations (Figure 5-6)
are compared to the spatial and temporal scales of relevant monitoring
programs.
    Figure 5-7 qualitatively shows the effects of changes in marine con-
stituents on valued marine ecosystem components. VECs include important
ecosystem components and major fisheries, as well as demersal and pelagic
fish life stages that occupy distinct habitats and might be affected differ-
entially. Constituents are divided into physical oceanographic parameters
(e.g., waves or temperature), and into floating, dissolved, suspended, and
settleable categories. Figure 5-7 shows that specific constituents impact
more than one VEC and that some VECs are affected by more than one
constituent.
    The constituents shown in Figure 5-7 were selected because they are
typically measured in monitoring programs. Their division into floating,
dissolved, suspended, and settleable categories reflects the fact that their
association with particles of different sizes significantly influences the fates
and effects of most contaminants. However, the selection and arrangement
of these constituents is certainly not the only one possible. For example,
rather than focusing on physical and chemical parameters, the constituents
could include important dynamic processes, such as production, nutrient
regeneration, the flux of organic matter, and recruitment and mortality.
    Figure 5-8 furnishes the next link in the matrix-based assessment by
showing which sources of perturbation affect which constituents. This then
permits connecting sources of perturbation to effects on VECs. For exam-
ple, the amount and distribution of fine particles and nutrients are affected
by wastewater outfalls (Figure 5-8), and such changes can potentially affect
the soft benthos (Figure 5-7). This suggests a potential mechanistic link
between wastewater outfalls and effects on the soft benthos. Similarly,
marine commerce and boating create floating debris (Figure 5-8), which af-
fects marine birds (Figure 5-7). (These admittedly simplistic examples were
chosen for illustrative purposes; the reader is encouraged to investigate
other links suggested by Figures 5-7 and 5-8).
    These two figures can be integrated to furnish a synoptic view of the
impacts of both natural and human perturbations on the VECs. Thus, one






                              110







     Hour        Day  Week Month        Year Decade Century


                                        ,3-- _ -           -1000 km

                                       /      NONMOBILE
                               TEMPERATURE    METALS
                                             HYDROPHOBIC
                                             ORGANICS
                                    2---  \COMPLEXED   - 100 km
    2 -
                              / CURRENTS    -  METALS
                               DISSOLVED OXYGEN
            PATHOGENS*                     '
                              I FINE PARTICLES
                              NUTRIENTS
                              0  POLAR ORGANICS
         O~~cl~~~l -10km

6oy PATHOGENS




    0-
    0 -               /-_>                /                      - 1 km
                   / TEMPERATURE*
                    COARSE PARTICLES

                  I ORGANOMETALLICS

                   -  VOLATILE ORGANICS                           100




     -4      -3       -2       -1       0        1       2        3

                          TIME (log YEAR)

                 x Power Plants 
                 x Outfalls
                 x Harbors/Marinas

                                     LU  ,  Fishing
          L,                                     Dredging
          L                     j   -         Peak River Flow
          u- I   I Storms
                                         =I  I   El Ninios
                                         I        I Blooms
                                         I  - I Diseases
                                              Ecological Interactions








                             0a
                             0)
                             Ca



                            U) E
                         to




~~~~~~FL






           a)   Lu  
               0)~~~~~~~~C I
                            Iï¿½




               Iiï¿½~~I








                                 U)0
                  U)~~~~~c)







         FIGURE 5-6 Characteristic temporal and spatial scales of important constituents and
         sources of perturbation. Constituents are the same as those in Figure 5-6, but have been
         abbreviated. "Temp *" refers to temperature changes from coastal power plants, and
         "Ibmp" to natural temperature changes (i.e., El Nifio events). "Path *" refers to bacterial
         contamination from wastewater outfalls and storm runoff, and "Path" to pathogens from
         natural sources that cause diseases in urchins, fish, and other organisms. The abscissa
         represents a crude estimate of the half life or recurrence time of each constituent. The
         ordinate represents the spatial displacement likely to occur over that time, or the scale of
         activity. For example, nonmobile metals and hydrophobic organics are presumed to persist
         in the environment and spread much more widely than nutrients. The temporal and spatial
         boundaries of existing monitoring programs are outlined by a solid line, with the exception
         of the CaICOFI Program, whose parameters are indicated by an "X" in the upper right of
         the figure. Constituents with similar temporal and spatial scales are outlined with dotted
         lines. SOURCE: After Clark, 1986.







                                          112



                 VALUED ECOSYSTEM                                       e
                 COMPONENTS          .  m  



      MARINE                         r  CL E  ï¿½               1      i  i   ,   :  I
      CONSTITUENTS             \s,

          OCEANOGRAPHIC

             Currents                    ï¿½ï¿½                             ï¿½
             Winds                      ï¿½ï¿½                              ï¿½
             Waves                             ï¿½  ï¿½ 
             Temperature             ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½         ï¿½   ï¿½  ï¿½
             Dissolved Oxygen        ï¿½         ï¿½  ï¿½       ï¿½  ï¿½      ï¿½  ï¿½

           FLOATING
             Floating Debris                                               ï¿½   ï¿½  ï¿½

           DISSOLVED

             Nutrients               ï¿½ï¿½        ï¿½      ï¿½          ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½
             Volatile Organics       ï¿½  ï¿½                               ï¿½
             Polar Organics          ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½                            ï¿½
             Complexed Metals               0
             Organometallics                ï¿½

           SUSPENDED

             Fine Particles             *             ï¿½      ï¿½
             Coarse Particles                      ï¿½   ï¿½      ï¿½
             Nutrients                                       ï¿½          ï¿½
             Pathogens                                ï¿½       ï¿½     ï¿½      ï¿½  ï¿½ ï¿½
             Hydrophobic Organics           ï¿½             ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½       ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½
             Organometallics                ï¿½             ï¿½ï¿½        ï¿½      ï¿½ 
             Nonmobile Metals                             ï¿½

           SETTLEABLE
             Fine Particles                    *  *       0
             Coarse Particles                  ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½  ï¿½
             Nutrients                         ï¿½ï¿½                   ï¿½
             Hydrophobic Organics              ï¿½  ï¿½       ï¿½
             Nonmobile Metals                  ï¿½  ï¿½       ï¿½



FIGURE  5-7  Major impacts of natural features of the ecosystem and anthropogenic
contaminants on valued ecosystem components. The dots indicate that the listed constituent
(left) is presumed to have a significant impact on that ecosystem component (top). Both
direct and indirect impacts are included. Volatile organics include phenols and halomethanes;
polar organics, PAH, DDT, and PCB. Nonmobile metals include lead and cadmium; complex
metals-nickel and copper; organometallics-mercury, tin, selenium, and arsenic. Nutrients
include both dissolved nutrients and nutrients associated with particles. Pathogens include
those from both anthropogenic (e.g., coliforms) and natural (e.g., urchin disease) sources.
Dissolved constituents are those less than .04 ,am in size. Settleable constituents are
defined operationally as those that settle to the bottom as a function of size and specific
gravity. Valued ecosystem components include various parts of the food chain, communities
associated with specific habitats (e.g., kelp beds), and important fisheries. Commercial
shellfish include abalones, lobsters, and urchins. SOURCE: After Clark, 1986.





                                   113

can start with VECs such as soft benthos or demersal fish populations,
identify the constituents that affect them, and then trace these constituents
back through their relationships with sources of perturbation to finally
determine all the kinds of perturbations that affect these ecosystem compo-
nents. The result of this process can be displayed as a matrix (Figure 5-5)
that summarizes the impact of each kind of perturbation on each ecosystem
component.
    Figure 5-5 was constructed using other knowledge from the ad hoc
method in addition to the mechanistic linkages shown in Figures 5-7 and
5-8. This points up shortcomings in the selection and organization of the
constituents shown in Figure 5-7. For example, Figure 5-5 shows that
sport and commercial fishing impact pelagic and demersal fish by directly
removing individuals from the population. However, since Figure 5-8 does
not include mortality as one of the marine constituents, Figures 5-7 and 5-8
do not combine to predict impacts on fish from fishing, an obvious failing. In
addition, Figure 5-5 indicates that blooms, natural diseases, and especially
ecological interactions have significant effects on the VECs. However,
Figure 5-7 shows that none of these important sources of perturbation
interact strongly with any of the constituents other than temperature and
dissolved oxygen. The panel thus combined insights from both the matrix
and ad hoc methods without rigidly adhering to the limitations of either.
    Figure 5-5 is an informative way to organize existing knowledge about
impacts on marine resources. However, the spatial and temporal scales of
both perturbations and ecosystem processes vary widely and this informa-
tion is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of monitoring. The overall
assessment framework therefore includes a means of organizing and com-
paring the temporal and spatial scales of constituents and perturbations.
A preliminary approach is presented in Figure 5-6. The constituents are
placed in a logarithmic time-space coordinate system based on crude esti-
mates of their half-lives in the marine environment (for contaminants) or
their typical scale of activity (for ecosystem features). The temporal and
spatial range of existing monitoring programs is indicated, and the temporal
and spatial scales of important perturbations shown along the x and y axes,
respectively.


                              SUMMARY

    This chapter presents the criteria and concepts used to organize the
analysis of monitoring efforts reviewed in the next chapter. Six key questions
made up the evaluation criteria used to assess both individual monitoring
programs and the collection of monitoring programs in the bight. These
questions addressed both the policy and technical aspects of monitoring,








                                          114





                 SOURCES OF
                 PERTURBATION              E       .            



      MARINE                    E                   5         
      CONSTITUENTS       E                    o S  D    m n              I E  0 

          OCEANOGRAPHIC

            Currents              ï¿½ ï¿½                                    0
            Winds               ï¿½                                        ï¿½
            Waves               ï¿½                                        ï¿½
            Temperature            *      e   *
            Dissolved Oxygen       0  *            0 * -

          FLOATING
            Roating Debris                               *    ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½

          DISSOLVED
            Nutrients           0 -ï¿½       0             0    0 
            Volatile Organics
            Polar Organics                               0  
            Comple.ed Metals                          ï¿½  ï¿½    ï¿½  ï¿½    ï¿½
            Organometallics                           ï¿½        *0   a        0

          SUSPENDED

            Fine Panicles       ï¿½       ï¿½                ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½
            Coarse Particles    ï¿½                     ï¿½  ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½
            Nulrients           ï¿½                        ï¿½    ï¿½
            Pathogens
            Hydrophobic Orgenics  
            Orgenometallios                           ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½
            Nonmobile Metals                          ï¿½  *  ï¿½ 0

          SETTLEABLE
            Fine Particles      0          0          *  0 0   
            Coarse Partices     ï¿½          ï¿½          ï¿½  ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½            ï¿½
            Nutrients           ï¿½          ï¿½             ï¿½    ï¿½           ï¿½
            Hydrophobic Organics              
            Nonmobile Metals               ï¿½          ï¿½  ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½



FIGURE 5-8  Sources of major perturbations to the bight's marine ecosystem and their
major impacts on marine constituents. The dots indicate that the listed perturbation (top)

is presumed to have a significant effect on the listed constituent (left). Both direct and
indirect impacts are included. Perturbations include both human and natural sources of

change. Basin flushing refers to the turnover of near-bottom water in offshore basins; mass
sediment flows to sudden, large movements of sediment on the shelf; blooms or invasions to

rapid increases in population levels of otherwise rare species (e.g., the echiuran Listriolobus
or the kelp isopod Pentidothea resecta). Multiple sources of impacts of one kind (e.g.,
power plants, dredging) have been lumped to provide a consistent level of generality among
perturbations. SOURCE: After Clark, 1986.







emphasizing the panel's focus on the functioning of the monitoring system
as a whole.
    Three areas that are especially relevant to the evaluation criteria
were also discussed. Clear objectives are crucial in providing direction for
monitoring design and implementation. An effective technical design then
translates these objectives into decisions about what to monitor; how, when,
and where to take measurements; and how to analyze and interpret the
data. Finally, an overall assessment of environmental problems in the bight
provides a framework for determining if all important questions are being
addressed and whether monitoring resources are being allocated effectively.







                                 6 
         Analysis of Monitoring Efforts














    As described in Chapter 4, there exists a wide range of current and
historical monitoring efforts in the Southern California Bight. Analyzing
each of these in turn would be an unrealistic task, but examining only a
few in detail might cause us to neglect important insights and patterns
that could be derived from a broad survey. This review therefore identifies
important conceptual issues, and illustrates them using examples from
existing monitoring programs.
    Many of these issues and examples identify shortcomings of the mon-
itoring system and existing programs, and others stress positive develop-
ments. The analysis that follows emphasizes that monitoring efforts in
Southern California are characterized by a commitment to technical ex-
cellence and continued evolution toward more sophisticated and effective
planning and implementation. There is a broad consensus in the mon-
itoring community that programs today are, in general, vastly improvedI
over those in effect 10 or more years ago. This progress has highlighted
remaining problems and has allowed attention to shift to broader concerns.
The willing participation in this case study by all parts of the monitoringI
community is clear evidence of their interest in continuing to improve
monitoring efforts.
    This chapter focuses on four main topics:

    1. institutional objectives and their limitations,
    2. technical design and implementation,
    3. technical interpretation and decision making, and

                                 116





       t                                 ~~~~~~~~~~117

           4. the overall allocation and organization of monitoring.
           Judgments about monitoring's effectiveness in each of these areas are
       based on the criteria and concepts outlined in Chapter 5. This chapter
       discusses these concepts more extensively, in light of evidence from specific
       programs.
           The panel's analysis of monitoring was based in large part on the
       written and verbal comments of invited speakers at the fact-finding sessions
 *and further in-depth interviews with members of the monitoring community.
       The specific comments of these participants in the case study contributed
       to a consensus about the overall strengths and weaknesses of monitoring in
       the bight. This consensus is presented here as a series of statements and is
       amplified in the following sections.
           'Me strengths of the monitoring system include:
            * an established legal'requirement for addressing environmental is-
       sues and problems;
I           *~~~ important contributions to environmental decision making;
            a active links to ongoing research programs;
            a innovative monitoring program designs and techniques;
            *  high-quality methods for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting
       data;
            *  raw monitoring data of high quality and integrity;
            *  large data sets that have greatly increased understanding of local-
       ized impacts, particularly of municipal wastewater discharges; and
             *a few long-term data sets that are valuable for examining large-scale
       and long-term effects of human activities on the bight.
       The weaknesses of the monitoring system include-
            * poorly defined management objectives;
         for   poorly defined monitoring endpoints or decision criteria, especially
         frnarrative water quality objectives;
             *lack of explicit conceptual designs that link monitoring to specific
       hypotheses or paradigms about the ocean environment;
            * inability to address regional or cumulative effects in the bight as a
       whole;
             *sampling designs that do not take into account spatial and temporal
       scales of natural variability;
            a reliance on a shotgun approach that measures many parameters,
       regardless of their relevance to operational, environmental, or public health
       decisions;
             *rigidity that does not permit dropping redundant or outdated pa-
       rameters, incorporating research with defined endpoints, or making adjust-

       meats in the light of new information;





                                  118

    * over-commitment of resources to well-understood problems;
    * lack of a data management system containing a wide range of data
types from all major monitoring programs;
    * absence of synthesis that provides usable information to managers
and other decision makers; and
    * inability to effectively report the overall status of the resources and
water quality in the bight to the public, the scientific community, and policy
makers.
    It should be emphasized that this consensus reflects the judgment of
many people actively involved in designing, carrying out, and using the data
from monitoring programs. Thus, in spite of the strengths mentioned above,
and the fact that monitoring data have been used in decision making, there
is evidence that the monitoring system could be more efficient, focused,
and comprehensive.

     INSTITUTIONAL OBJECTIVES AND THEIR LIMITATIONS
    As described in Chapter 5, the objectives that motivate marine mon-
itoring can be considered as a hierarchy or continuum. This begins with
broad public concerns about public health and the status of marine re-
sources; extends through laws, regulations, and permits; and ends with
the specifications of individual monitoring programs. In Chapter 3 the
public's concerns were reviewed in the section "Public Concerns for the
Bight," while the laws that furnish the regulatory context for monitoring
were reviewed in "The Regulatory Sector." Finally, the structure of effluent
limitations and water quality criteria was described in Chapter 4 in "The
Monitoring Sector."
    These objectives influence the design of monitoring programs. They
also influence the institutions that oversee the monitoring system. As a
result, objectives are expressed explicitly in permits and other documents
and implicitly in the behavior of the institutions that regulate monitoring.
The following two sections address each of these aspects in turn.

                               Objectives
    Because of the vast number of parameters that could be measured in
the marine environment, monitoring programs require clear and precise
objectives. The numeric effluent limitations and water quality criteria
in discharge and other permits provide such precision. However, the
narrative water quality criteria relating to unacceptable degradation or
change do not furnish this level of precision. For example, the NPDES
permit for the County Sanitation Districts of Orange County states that
marine communities shall not be degraded. `lb monitor degradation in fish





                                   119

communities, a program could legitimately focus on any of the following
parameters:

    ï¿½  diversity,
    ï¿½  species richness,
    ï¿½  community trophic structure,
    ï¿½  relative abundance of numerically dominant species,
    ï¿½  population sizes of numerically dominant species,
    ï¿½  population sizes of trophically important species,
    ï¿½  size-age relationships,
    ï¿½  reproductive potential as measured by gonad weight,
    ï¿½  mortality of one or more species,
    ï¿½  incidence of fin rot, tumors, and other abnormalities, or
    ï¿½  body burdens of specific contaminants.

    Although these are all measurable parameters that may be indicators
of degradation, they do not define it. Tb design a monitoring program with
the objective of ascertaining "degradation," the term must be defined in a
meaningful way. Thus, monitoring program objectives should be stated as
clear, preferably quantitative, questions or null hypotheses: for example,
a program could be designed to determine if the three most abundant
fish species within 3 mi of the Orange County outfall had decreased in
abundance by more than 50 percent from one year to the next. Such a
decrease might be defined as a degradation of these fish populations.
    One of the most comprehensive efforts to state monitoring objectives
in Southern California is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doc-
ument titled Objectives and Rationale for the County Sanitation Districts of
Orange County 301(h) Monitoring Program. For each program element,
objectives of the relevant laws and regulations are stated, and sampling
and analysis plans are specified. Objectives are precisely stated for in-
fluent, source control, effluent, and solids-handling monitoring. Although
objectives for receiving-water monitoring are stated more clearly than ever
before, they still contain no quantitative criteria for the kinds or amounts of
change that should be monitored for. This is an important shortcoming be-
cause receiving-water monitoring focuses directly on determining whether
human and ecosystem health objectives are being met.
    This demonstrates that another level of detail is needed if monitoring
in the bight is to consistently provide useful information. It should consist of
specific descriptions of the kinds of changes, along with quantitative criteria
about the amount of change, that should be monitored for. Hypothetical
examples of such objectives, framed as null hypotheses, might be as follows:

    * The operation of diffusers for the discharge of cooling water will
not decrease the monthly average light transmission in the upcoast quarter





                                  120

of the adjacent kelp bed more than X percent below light transmission in
the downcoast quarter of the kelp bed.
       The area around the sewage outfall outside the zone of initial
dilution (ZID) exhibiting a change in benthic diversity of X percent or
more shall not increase from year to year. Background diversity shall be
defined as that found at reference stations A, B, and C.
    * The long-term trend of DDT in the muscle tissue of adult Dover
sole from the Palos Verdes Shelf shall not increase. Long-term shall mean
a period of five years or more, and sampling shall be designed to detect a
change in the long-term average of at least 5 percent.
    These null hypotheses define a specific parameter and the amount of
change to be measured. Before actual sampling begins, additional detail
relating to confidence limits, background levels, and other factors must be
decided. In the first hypothesis above, locations (surface, bottom, midwater,
water column average), time scales (daily, weekly, monthly averages), and
distribution of sampling stations must all be established. These decisions
can be made with the support of the technical design tools outlined in
Figures 5-1 to 5-4. In contrast to most objectives used as the basis of
receiving-water monitoring, the three examples above provide the founda-
tion for focused, efficient monitoring programs.
    In contrast to other major monitoring programs in the bight, the Ma-
rine Review Committee (MRC) programs around the San Onofre Nuclear
Generating Station (SONGS) were all designed with a specified probabil-
ity of detecting definite amounts of change (Chapter 5). This policy was
based on predictions of impacts and on a management decision that these
amounts of change would be accepted as evidence of power plant impact.
    There are two impediments to establishing this detailed level of objec-
tives: (1) incomplete scientific knowledge (for example, an inability to es-
tablish source/receptor relationships), and (2) the institutional environment
of monitoring. The environmental effects of all human activities cannot
be predicted accurately. Where they cannot, objectives must necessarily
remain more subjective, or research should be performed. In other cases,
however, environmental effects are well enough understood that reason-
ably accurate predictions could be used to design more efficient monitoring
programs. The changes that occur in the benthos around municipal waste
discharges are a case in point. Changes in community composition, abun-
dance, diversity, etc., have been well documented and could be used to
develop more ecologically relevant and precise receiving-water objectives.
Even where clearer and more quantitative objectives could be developed,
however, there may be institutional constraints against implementing them.





                                  121

For example, quantitative receiving water objectives could decrease regula-
tory flexibility if they were rigidly interpreted as a measure of compliance
and automatically triggered management actions or litigation.
    Despite these impediments, clearer monitoring objectives would result
in beneficial gains in clarity, efficiency, and useful information. These gains
would make the effort involved in developing them and integrating them
into the regulatory framework worthwhile. In spite of these benefits, a
danger of quantitative monitoring objectives is that they may be applied
blindly, with little regard for naturally occurring effects. For example,
between 1973 and 1977, there was a massive influx of the echiuran worm
Listriolobus into benthic communities in the bight (Stull et al, 1986).
This organism's burrowing, respiratory, and feeding activities aerated and
reworked sediments throughout the bight. In areas of wastewater impacts
(particularly White Point on the Palos Verdes Shelf) these activities reduced
apparent impacts from the Los Angeles County outfall. When the worm
disappeared, impacts reappeared. Without awareness of this naturally
occurring but anomalous and confounding event, the strict application
of quantitative criteria would have led to the erroneous conclusion that
impacts of wastewater outfalls had decreased and then increased.


                        Institutional Limitations

    The statutory and regulatory framework within which monitoring is
conducted in Southern California has evolved piecemeal over time, and
as a result, deficiencies and inconsistencies exist within the institutional
structure. These affect not only the way monitoring is carried out but also
the quality of the information monitoring can produce. The most important
of these limitations are:
    * lack of attention to nonpermit activities that may have large envi-
ronmental impacts;
    * rigidity and lack of flexibility; and
    * a piecemeal, permit-by-permit approach to problems that may ac-
tually be larger in scope.
These limitations will be discussed in turn and illustrated with specific
examples.


    Nonpermit Activities
    The vast majority of monitoring in the bight is compliance monitoring;
that is, it is required as a condition of obtaining a permit. The unstated
assumption underlying this policy is that the permitting process addresses





                                  122

all aspects of discharges and other activities that potentially affect the en-
vironment. This is not always the case, however, since some large inputs of
contaminants are not covered by permits. These include rivers, which con-
tain runoff, treated municipal waste water, and upstream discharges; storm
drains; fallout of airborne pollutants; and diffuse inputs of hydrocarbons
and other contaminants from marinas and harbors.
    Although rainfall is sporadic in Southern California, winter storms
can dump I to 3 or more inches of rainfall within 24 hours, washing
accumulated contaminants from streets, sidewalks, and other surfaces into
rivers and storm drains, where they are carried out to the ocean. The
river system in the Los Angeles basin (Figure 1-2) drains a watershed of
over 4,100 mi2. During a major storm, the Los Angeles River alone can
discharge 65 billion gal of water during a 24-hour period. Additional runoff
enters the ocean directly from storn drains. For example, 75 separate storm
drains discharge into Mission Bay in San Diego. Many of the industries
that discharge into rivers and storm drains operate under National Pollutant
Discharge System (NPDES) permits, and there is some monitoring in the
Los Angeles basin rivers. However, many river and storm drain inputs are
not monitored, and the system as a whole is not managed as a source of
contamination.
    The bight is adjacent to urban areas that are major sources of air
pollutants. Aerial fallout to the ocean surface constitutes a significant
source of contaminants (e.g., Table 2-2). The many marinas and harbors
are sources of hydrocarbons and other contaminants derived from bilge
pumping, sewage discharge, fuel loading and transfer, marine construction
and maintenance activities, and ship traffic. Therefore, it is clear that
monitoring to satisfy permit requirements does not address all of the large
inputs of pollutants to the bight.

    Inflxibility
    Because monitoring programs are typically defined in regulatory per-
mits, it is difficult to alter them as knowledge accumulates. The lengthy
public hearing process required for updating permits has occasionally de-
terred permittees from attempting to modify their monitoring programs. In
addition, there is a natural reluctance to discard or modify parameters that
have traditionally been measured, but which may now be outmoded. As a
result, monitoring programs often include outdated or inappropriate mea-
surements. Further, procedures that are experimental or in development
have been incorporated as routine elements of monitoring, even though
the data they produce are not adequate for decision making.
    Oil and grease (a generic contaminant category including petroleum,
synthetic, and biological "oily" materials) are measured throughout the





                                  123

water column as a part of several wastewater outfall monitoring programs.
However, because most oil and grease float, and therefore are rarely found
above detection limits in the water column, it is not cost effective to sample
there. In addition, dissolved and dispersed oil and grease derive from many
other sources, such as oil seeps, bilge pumping, aerial fallout, refinery
effluents, stormwater runoff, and even from natural biological sources.
Therefore, they are equivocal indicators, at best, of outfall impacts. It was
suggested that floating grease balls, which can more directly be related to
wastewater outfalls, would be a better indicator.
    Biological and chemical oxygen demand (BOD and COD, respectively)
have traditionally been measured as part of benthic monitoring programs
around wastewater outfalls. These parameters were originally included in
receiving-water monitoring programs because they were used by sanitary
engineers to monitor in-plant sewage treatment processes. There was a
consensus among practitioners in the bight that these parameters are less
biologically relevant in an open ocean environment and therefore cannot be
meaningfully interpreted. It was suggested that measuring organic carbon
and carbon flux, ammonia-nitrogen, and total nitrogen would be more
ecologically meaningful (see pages 28-29).
    As a condition of their 301(h) permit, the County Sanitation Districts
of Orange County are required to routinely measure a wide range of
chemical contaminants, even though many of them are never found in
effluent or sediments. This represents a large expenditure of resources
where past experience has shown there is likely to be little contamination. In
contrast, in Los Angeles City's Hyperion monitoring program, the search for
chemical contamination is more focused. Priority pollutants in the effluent
are measured monthly (quarterly for volatile organics), thus providing
regular information about what is entering the environment. During the
first monitoring year, all priority pollutants are measured in sediments,
trawl-caught fish and invertebrates, and sport fish. Contaminants that were
not found in the first year are not monitored during the second and third
years. In the fourth year, the entire range of priority pollutants is measured
again.
    The city of San Diego is required to monitor suspended solids in the
water column around the Point Loma wastewater outfall. However, because
sampling stations are near the Point Loma kelp bed, the suspended solids
samples sometimes contain larval crustaceans or pieces of kelp, seriously
compromising the utility of this outfall plume indicator. More useful
approaches here might be to measure light transmission or use sediment
traps to determine fluxes of suspended particles in the water column.
    The location of sampling stations can also be inappropriate. The sam-
pling grid around the Point Loma outfall contains a southern control station





                                   124

that is of little or no use as a control because it is close to a dredged ma-
terial disposal site and the sediments are predominantly extremely coarse
sand. Even assuming that movement of material from the disposal site has
not compromised the control station, the unusual sediments will necessarily
be associated with a different benthic community, making meaningful com-
parisons with the outfall stations difficult if not impossible. At the northern
end of the sampling grid, the city's permit required sampling a control
station called B-2, located in 50 ft of water. This station was sampled for
years, but was never used in analyses because there were no other stations
at this depth. A transect had originally been planned at 50 ft, but all the
stations, with the exception of B-2, were located in areas of rocky bottom,
where benthic grab sampling was impossible. The city requested that it
be allowed to stop sampling B-2 and instead add a control station at 150
ft. This would have been a more efficient use of resources because the
sampling grid already included a transect at the 150-ft outfall depth, but
lacked a control. Implementing this change in the sampling design required
several years and a public hearing, at a cost of wasted sampling effort at
B-2 and reduced ability to monitor impacts at 150 ft.
    As part of its NPDES permit to discharge cooling water from coastal
power plants, the Southern California Edison Company is required to
monitor for thermal effects on marine resources despite the fact that nearly
20 years of studies have documented the limited nature of these effects. This
example is indicative of the lack of clearly defined endpoints in monitoring
studies, which hinder reallocation of monitoring resources to unresolved or
more pressing issues.
    Histopathology, tissue analysis for contaminants, and enterococcus
measurements have been included as routine parts of monitoring programs,
even though many participants in the case study believe they require more
research and development before they can provide useful information. The
panel stresses that these comments derived from a sincere desire to produce
useful information and a frustration with requirements to perform studies
whose results are ambiguous or uninterpretable.
    Several unresolved issues apply to tissue chemistry studies. The basis
of presentation of data has not been standardized, making it difficult to
interpret and compare results. For example, data may be presented on a dry
weight or lipid weight basis, with each method presenting a different picture
of contaminant levels. The problem of confounding due to seasonal and
reproductive cycles also has not been resolved. In the spring and summer,
fishes' reproductive season, fats are mobilized and transferred from the liver
to the gonads. This may affect contaminant levels not only in these tissues
but in others as well (Cross et al., 1986). There may be differences in both
the timing of reproductive cycles and in tissue chemistry between different
species. However, because it is not possible to predict which species will be





                                  126

    Permit-by-Permit Approach

    The existing regulatory framework necessarily forces monitoring into
a permit-by-permit approach to environmental problems in the bight. This
results in monitoring programs that look at each activity in isolation from
all others. Taking monitoring results at face value requires making two
related and scientifically dangerous assumptions. The first is that there are
no cumulative, overlapping, or interactive effects. The second is that the
measurements taken to document the effects of a particular activity reflect
that activity and no others. Neither of these assumptions is especially
robust, as several examples will make clear.
    The County Sanitation Districts of Orange County carry out a mon-
itoring program around their wastewater outfall. Within or very near the
sampling grid are other biological and physical/chemical patterns that in-
teract with the effects of the outfall. On the eastern edge of the sampling
grid is an active EPA interim-designated, dredged material disposal site for
dredged material from upper Newport Bay. This dumpsite is in temporary
use, and many of the contaminants found in the outfall effluent are also
found in the dredged material. Just inshore of the outfall is the mouth
of the Santa Ana River, which seems to be associated with a plume of
modified sediments that affect benthic community patterns in the sampling
grid. On the western edge of the sampling grid is a region of elevated
contaminant levels of unknown origin. The permit-by-permit approach
makes it more likely that these potentially confounding influences will be
disregarded when designing a monitoring program for the Orange County
outfall.
    The city of Los Angeles and the County Sanitation Districts of Los
Angeles and Orange counties all carry out fish trawling programs around
the Hyperion, White Point, and Orange County wastewater outfalls, re-
spectively. These sampling programs are used to independently assess the
effects of each outfall on fish populations in the region of the outfall.
However, it is likely that at least some portion of the studied fish popula-
tions moves throughout the entire area. This means that, for example, the
monitoring program at White Point may actually also be measuring some
effects of Hyperion and Orange County.
    The city of Los Angeles' trawl sampling program in Santa Monica Bay
is designed to document effects of the Hyperion outfall on fish populations.
However, the Southern California Edison Company and Los Angeles De-
partment of Water and Power also operate coastal power plants in Santa
Monica Bay. Entrainment of large numbers of fish larvae by cooling wa-
ter intakes and impingement of adults may affect fish population sizes and
community structure in the bay. In addition, some of the species monitored
in the trawling program may spend part or all of the juvenile phase of their





                                  125

abundant enough for tissue chemistry studies at any one time, dischargers
are allowed to sample species of opportunity. This means that no two
dischargers consistently sample the same suite of species at the same time.
It also means that the same discharger will sample different species in
successive surveys. Given the unresolved issues related to seasonal cycles
and interspecies differences, the lack of consistent target populations makes
it extremely difficult to interpret tissue chemistry data and relate them to
discharges.
    'Me issues of standardization of measurement techniques, seasonal
physiological changes, and inconsistent target species also plague histopa-
thology studies. In addition, the interpretation of histological changes in
marine organisms can be demanding and ambiguous, and it was suggested
by several participants that this technique is not yet suitable for routine
monitoring.
    In contrast to these two examples of incompletely developed tech-
niques being used -as routine monitoring tools, the city of Los Angeles'
Hyperion monitoring program includes a microlayer study that is explicitly
experimental in design. The permit states that the first-year sampling re-
sults will be used to determine the scope and direction of future monitoring.
It also defines first-year requirements of an otter trawl sampling program
and stipulates that first-year data be used to refine the sampling design for
subsequent years. In addition, Hyperion's permit includes specific language
that allows for further flexibility as needed (see pages 63 and 65). These ex-
amples suggest that permits can be structured to be flexible and adaptable.
This produces two important benefits. First, it allows for improving and
refining monitoring programs as data become available. Second, it allows
resources to be used more effectively by recognizing that some questions
are more appropriately dealt with in a research context than in routine
monitoring. Repeatedly collecting the same data over and over again is
not always the best way to address unresolved questions about the utility
of new technical methods.
    The Southern California Edison Co. recognized this when it began
its program of special studies in the marine environment (see Chapter
4). The special studies were explicitly experimental in nature because
it was understood that it is often difficult to define research programs
succinctly enough to make them part of routine monitoring. They produced
information that was important in understanding and reducing impacts
without becoming a part of routine monitoring activities. On the other
hand, Edison personnel pointed out to the case study panel that they
found the data from mandated monitoring programs based on conventional
measurements to be of relatively little value in managing marine resources.





                                           127

        life cycle in harbors and marinas in and around the bay. This example
        illustrates that patterns in fish populations (particularly population size and
         community structure) measured by the Hyperion monitoring program may
         actually reflect the effects of a suite of impacts, some of them occurring
         on other life stages than those targeted by the monitoring program. Other
         sources of effects were not incorporated into the design of the Hyperion
         trawling program despite the outfall's close proximity to coastal power
         plants; permitted and accidental discharges from oil refineries, stormwa-
         ter drains, and nonpoint sources of pollution; marinas; and contaminated
*       ~~juvenile habitats.
             The permit-by-permit approach to establishing monitoring programs
         also leads to important inconsistencies among monitoring programs. Some
         of these reflect the fact that permits were written at different times, with
         more recent permits incorporating more up-to-date knowledge. However,
        other inconsistencies reflect differences in approach or expertise among the
*       ~~regional water quality control boards and EPA Region IX personnel. As
         discussed more completely below, such inconsistencies make it difficult to
         develop an integrated view of impacts and trends in the bight as a whole.
             Specific examples of inconsistencies among monitoring programs in-
         clude the following:
             * The city of Los Angeles has a flexible approach to measuring pri-
         ority pollutants in sediments and organisms, whereas the County Sanitation
         Districts of Orange County measure priority pollutants regularly.
             * Trlawl sampling around wastewater outfalls is usually conducted
*       ~~quarterly or semiannually, but trawl sampling around coastal power plants
         is conducted every two months.
             * The city of Los Angeles conducts offshore water quality sampling
*       ~~weekly because its discharge is near areas of intense water-contact recre-
        ational areas, whereas the County Sanitation Districts of Orange County
         conduct offshore water sampling monthly for some parameters and quar-
         terly for others.
 *           * ~~~No two dischargers consistently use the same organisms for tissue
         chemistry measurements.
             * The city of San Diego is not required to conduct trawl, rig fishing,
         or tissue chemistry studies, although other dischargers are required to do
         so. However, trawls are performed on a voluntary basis to contribute to a
         regionwide assessment of fisheries resources.

                    TECHNICAL DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
             This section summarizes the extent to which monitoring programs
        in the Southern California Bight meet the criteria for technical design
        presented in Figures 5-1 to 5-4. The discussion is organized around





                                  128

    ï¿½ the issues of statistical design of monitoring plans,
    ï¿½ the establishment of field and laboratory procedures that ensure
valid, high quality measurements, and
       data management strategies. 

                           Statistical Design
    There is still room for improvement in how statistical tools--quantita-
tive null hypotheses, statistical models, quantification and partitioning of
variability, optimization analyses, and power tests, for example-are applied
to program design. These tools are beginning to be applied to monitor-
ing programs in the bight, and the EPA has produced 301(h) guidance
documents that provide instructions for their use; however, lack of clear
quantitative objectives prevents effective application. New monitoring tools
can be properly applied only in the context of clear statements of manage-
ment needs and the questions and/or hypotheses that reflect them. The
following examples illustrate this point:
    * Power tests can estimate the likelihood that a sampling plan will
detect a change, such as an increase in the diversity of the benthic infaunal
community of 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, etc. Without guidance from regulations
or ecological theory about what specific amount of change is important,
it is still possible to perform power tests for a wide range of possible
changes, then choose the sampling plan that is most likely to detect change
(any change). However, a more useful approach would be to decide that
a specific increase of 0.3, for example, is a strong indicator of outfall
enrichment effects, then use power tests to design a sampling plan with a
high probability of detecting that precise amount of change.
    * Measurements of background variability can be extremely useful in
designing efficient sampling plans. In spite of this, great time and expense
could be wasted attempting to measure variability on all scales (e.g., feet to
hundreds of miles and days to decades). However, if managers determine
that only present effects within 6 mi of an outfall are of interest, other
variability scales can be deemphasized. If managers are also interested
in change from year to year, annual background variability would become
relevant. If managers are interested in longer-term trends-more than 10
years, for example-then interannual variability on that time scale would
become relevant.
    * There has been discussion in the development of 301(h) monitoring
plans about the proper number of "replicate" benthic grabs to take at each
station. This discussion has used the results of technical design tools such
as power analysis. Even these tools cannot resolve the issue because there
is no one right number of replicates to collect. The proper number depends
on the question(s) being asked, the amount of predicted change sampling





                                   129

should detect, and the sources of variability that could obscure monitoring
results.
    This last point deserves further discussion because of tie mistaken
assumption that the same number of replicates is appropriate for all situa-
tions. As one example, if concern is focused on the difference in diversity
inside and outside the ZID boundary at one point in time, then a different
number of grabs at each station may be required than if the concern is
about how the relationship between diversity inside and outside the bound-
ary changes over five years. Further, if concern is focused on how diversity
inside the ZID changes over five years in response to changes in the output
of suspended solids, then another number of grabs might be appropriate.
    Some of the deficiency in the consistent and proper use of technical
design tools in monitoring programs in the Southern California Bight stems
from the incorrect use of statistical concepts. 'TWo such important concepts
are "significance" and "replication."
    Portions of permits and regulations state that a particular activity shall
not cause a "significant" alteration, change, decrease, or degradation in
some physical, chemical, or biological parameter. The California ocean
plan (State Water Resources Control Board, 1987) defines a "significant"
difference as "a statistically significant difference in the means of two
distributions of sampling results at the 95 percent confidence level." The
problem with this definition is that it provides no guidance in determining
how large a change is of importance and should therefore be detected
by a monitoring program. This is because virtually any change can be a
statistically significant difference, depending on the intensity of sampling.
Thus, a monitoring program with a low intensity of sampling will find only
large changes to be statistically significant, while one with a high intensity
of sampling could find even minuscule changes to be statistically significant.
Permits and regulations should replace the word "significant" with another
such as "meaningful" or "important" and then define the terms clearly.
    There is an emphasis on replication in Southern California Bight
monitoring programs but no equivalent awareness that replication has at
least two different meanings, and that many aspects of a sampling plan can
conceivably be replicated. Replication is loosely used to refer to the process
of collecting repeated measurements, samples, or comparisons. However,
in a stricter sense, it refers to the process of repeating entire experimental
treatments. In addition, a sampling plan may have many levels of sampling,
any and all of which may be repeated. For example, a monitoring program
set up to determine whether benthic infaunal diversity inside the ZID
is decreasing over time with respect to diversity outside the ZID might
include:
       several stations inside the ZID,





                                  130

    ï¿½ several stations outside the ZID,
    ï¿½ one or more "replicate" grabs at each station, and
    ï¿½  several sampling periods over time.

    This sampling plan thus includes replicate grabs at each station, repli-
cate stations within each area, and replicate times or surveys during which
all stations are sampled. Depending on the resolution desired, technical
design tools such as power and optimization analysis might indicate differ-
ent numbers of "replicates" at each level of sampling (e.g., two grabs per
station, five stations per area, and nine surveys over time). When different
kinds of "replication" are not clearly distinguished, monitoring programs
tend to emphasize repeated samples at a single place and time. A balance
has to be struck between extensive replication of all samples and spreading
limited sampling resources over other levels of a sampling plan.



                    Field and Laboratory Procedures

    Many field and laboratory procedures are of commendable quality in
Southern California monitoring, where an attempt is made to use state-
of-the-art methods, particularly in the larger programs. In addition, an
emphasis on improving monitoring methods has resulted in standardization
of invertebrate taxonomy, benthic grab sampling techniques, and chemical
analysis procedures. Monitoring programs at the municipal wastewater
discharges benefit directly from research carried out at SCCWRP. New
questions and new methods of sampling and analysis have been incorporated
quickly into ongoing monitoring programs.
    Although monitoring methods are state of the art, they may not al-
ways be adequate to address monitoring objectives. Such an example was
described above with reference to tissue chemistry and histopathology stud-
ies. As another example, public health surveillance methods are not precise
enough to detect brief episodes of mild illness among swimmers due to bac-
terial or viral agents in marine waters. In addition to the epidemiological
problems, studies of putative viral agents are hampered by lack of culture
techniques. There is growing recognition that there may well be a better
indicator of fecal contamination than the coliforms (i.e., the enterococcus
group), and health agencies are actively acquiring information to assess
these new indicators. Because epidemiological studies are expensive to
perform and marine epidemiological studies often yield equivocal results,
especially when performed on a small-scale local basis, state and federal
public health and water quality agencies have been reluctant to fund such
studies.





                                           131

                                   Data Management

             Data management is vitally important to monitoring efforts because it
        determines the final accessibility and utility of the data. Data management
        should include quality control procedures that ensure data accuracy at every
        step from initial collection to final analysis and reporting. It should also
        include methods for making the data readily available in usable formats to
        those responsible for analyzing and examining them. Another important but
        little-recognized aspect of data management is the importance of specifying
        data tabulation methods, structures, and handling procedures before a
        sampling program starts. This allows data to be collected and processed
        in ways that are appropriate to their final use, dissemination, and storage.
        This specification of data management procedures at the beginning of a
*  ~     program can save significant effort and money that would otherwise be
        spent correcting errors in raw data, analyses, and reports.
             At present, there is a wide variety of approaches to marine monitoring
        data management in the bight. In spite of this variety, the panel found that
        the major monitoring programs all have well-developed and active systems
        for ensuring the accuracy and quality of their raw data. These data are
        continually reviewed and updated when necessary. The following examples
        are representative of data management approaches in the bight.
             The 301(h) programs configure their data in the National Oceano-
        graphic Data Center (NODC) format and are now required to submit
        monitoring data to the EPA Ocean Data Evaluation System (ODES).
        ODES, designed to provide ready access to 301(h) data, has recently be-
        come fully operational and includes formal quality control procedures.
        However, not all historical outfall monitoring data are in digital format.
        For example, the Los Angeles County sanitation districts have computer-
        ized past monitoring data from the White Point outfall, whereas such data
        from the County Sanitation Districts of Orange County are available only
        in written reports.
             Data from the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation
        (CalCOFI) program are in NODC format and are available in published
        data reports. The Southern California Edison Company maintains its own
        data base for a wide range of monitoring data. The National Marine
        Fisheries Service and the California Department of Fish and Game have
        fisheries monitoring data available on magnetic tape; however, these agen-
        cies do not maintain user-oriented data bases to provide access to these
        data. Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography monitor temper-
        ature and wave energy and provide these data on magnetic tape on request.
        Data from smaller studies (e.g., Los Angeles Harbor, Marina del Rey) are
        typically stored on floppy disks or on consultants' computer systems.
             The city of San Diego and the County Sanitation Districts of Orange





                                  132

County have initiated analogous programs to centralize and automate their
in-house data management procedures. These systems provide computer-
ized data entry functions that automatically perform quality control checks
on a range of raw data. Validated data are stored in a centralized data
base and a set of menu-driven options allow users to update and extract
data. Additional menu options permit users to automatically produce stan-
tOdard inally thegulatemnoryrporats links atomaial frat darita for submisscal
tODES.dizalted sysemsulatoryrporate links atomaariticly ofora anatalfrsbiso
tools, such as spreadsheets and analysis and graphics software.j
    The taxonomic efforts of the Southern California Association of Marine
Invertebrate Taxonomists (SCAMIT) and the ODES data base represent
important steps in setting consistent standards for standardization, quality
control procedures, error checking, and digital formats for monitoring data.
However, there is currently no easily accessible, user-oriented data base sys-
tem to provide access to analysts interested in integrating data from several
different kinds of studies. Such a system would greatly facilitate attempts to
study regional and longer-term questions related to environmental effects
in the bight.
    There are two prototypes for such a system, each with its own strengths.
These are the operational environmental data base developed by the En-
vironmental Research Group of Southern California Edison and ODES.
Both systems are unusual in that they include extensive quality control
procedures and on-line documentation and are designed to permit data
analysts to use menu-driven routines to readily extract data needed for
analyses. Southern California Edison's system was designed to perform the
following functions:
    a store corrected and updated archival versions of important data
sets so that all analysts access the same version of the data;
    a store important data sets in a data base management system that
provides the ability for easy extraction, updating, and manipulation of data;
    * provide comprehensive on-line documentation of methods, error
corrections, data characteristics and peculiarities, and publications for each
data set;
    ï¿½ provide automated browse, search, retrieval, and reporting facili-
ties;
    * provide flexible links to the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) and
other data analysis systems; and
    * allow easy addition of novel data types to the system.

    This system is fully operational and contains a wide variety of mon-
itoring studies in standardized formats, thus facilitating comprehensive
analyses. These studies currently include:





                                  133

    * benthic infauna and sediment data from monitoring programs at
San Diego, Los Angeles city and county municipal wastewater outfalls;
    * Southern California Coastal Water Research Project's (SCCWRP's)
198-ft (60-m) survey;
    * Scripps' shoreline temperature data for the west coast of the United
States, and wave energy and wave direction database;
    * California Department of Fish and Game sportfish catch;
    * National Marine Fisheries Service commercial fish catch data;
    * benthic infaunal and sediment data from the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) study of the bight;
    * complete impingement data for all Southern California Edison
coastal power plants;
    * data from bightwide ichthyoplankton studies and fish trawl studies
performed for Southern California Edison; and
    * selected Marine Review Committee studies.

    This system is proprietary and is not accessible to scientists outside
of Southern California Edison. It does, however, illustrate that such com-
prehensive databases can be constructed. The main strength of Southern
California Edison's system is that it contains a wide range of data from
biological and physical oceanographic studies that are bightwide in scope.
The experience of constructing this database substantiated the fact that
locating, acquiring, correcting, and standardizing disparate data sets is a
significant effort.
    The other system that points the way toward bightwide data manage-
ment is ODES. ODES is intended as a national database to contain 301(h)
monitoring data, which includes (among others) benthic infauna and sedi-
ment chemistry, otter trawl, water quality, and other data types. It includes
a wide range of menus that assist users in extracting and combining data
from different studies, in performing common types of analyses, and in
creating maps and graphics. In addition, ODES provides for extracting raw
data for analysis with other software packages.
    Despite its strengths, ODES has shortcomings that restrict its utility
and that must be corrected in any future system that successfully provides
access to a range of monitoring studies. There is widespread dissatisfaction
with ODES within the Southern California monitoring community. This
dissatisfaction results from the difficult and labor intensive procedures
required to format data for submission to ODES. It also stems from the
lengthy wait required for feedback to requests for new species codes and
answers to technical questions. There is therefore a long delay between the
initiation of the submission process and the final availability of the data.
Users of ODES have access only to the analysis and reporting routines
that have been programmed into the system. While many of these are





                                  134

very useful, they do not cover the full variety of approaches required
for a comprehensive analysis of monitoring data. Requests for additional
analytical tools must wait until they can be programmed into the system,
since ODES does not allow users to directly access other analysis systems.
Users can, however, extract data from ODES and download them to their
own computer systems. Another shortcoming is that when new data types
are encountered, ODES must be reprogrammed to accept them, a process
that can take several months. In contrast, data base systems that are
designed for adaptability use table-driven data definition approaches to
allow for rapid modification of data base structures.
    ODES provides the ability to combine data from more than one study
in order to perform regional or national analyses. However, in practice this
capability is severely limited because ODES lacks an aggressive program
to update data sets in the system and to standardize taxonomy among
data sets. Experience in the bight has shown that such taxonomic updating  
and standardization is crucial if data sets are to retain their utility and if
different studies are to be combined. Species names, particularly of benthic
invertebrates, change continually over time as scientists adjust taxonomic
affinities. Thus, for data sets to remain current, even historical data must be
updated regularly. Taxonomic standards invariably differ among different
studies. Thlis is true even when efforts are made to use common standards.
Thus, in order for data from two or more studies to be combined, careful
attention must be paid to reconciling these superficial dissimilarities. As
a result of the lack of such updating and standardization procedures, only
analyses that do not depend on merging or matching species data can be
performed with ODES. Such analyses include those using derived variables
such as diversity indices, total abundance, numbers of species, or summaries
of higher taxonomic groups.


     TECHNICAL INTERPRETATION AND DECISION MAKING

    The ultimate goal of monitoring is to provide data and information
to support informed decision making. In this section, the technical inter-
pretation of data obtained in monitoring programs and its use in decision
making are addressed. Some examples show that monitoring data have
been adequately interpreted and used in decision making. Overall, how-
ever, considering the effort that has been put into data collection, no
comparable effort and expense has been devoted to translating that data
into useful information and using it in decision making.
    In spite of the shortcomings in the interpretation and decision-making
process (reviewed below), it is important to recognize that monitoring in-
formation has played a significant role in many far-reaching management





                                   135

decisions in the Southern California Bight. Water quality and bacteriologi-
cal monitoring data from Santa Monica Bay documented the severity and
extent of nearshore contamination from sewage discharges in the 1940s
and 1950s. These data helped make the case for construction of offshore
outfalls in 1957 and 1959 that dramatically reduced nearshore sewage con-
tamination.
    In 1977, the California Department of Fish and Game closed the
abalone fishery from Palos Verdes Point to Dana Point. This decision was
based on monitoring surveys and catch data. As another example, scientists
of NOAAs Ocean Assessments Division have used data from SCCWRP and
the municipalities to evaluate environmental conditions relating to the body
burdens of chlorinated hydrocarbons in coastal marine organisms (Mearns
and O'Connor, 1984; Matta et al., 1986; and Mearns and Van Ness, 1987).
    The inability of the city of San Diego's Point Loma wastewater treat-
ment plant to consistently meet bacterial standards contained in the 1983
California ocean plan (State Water Resources Control Board, 1983) for
offshore kelp beds contributed to a decision by the city to extend its outfall
farther offshore. Earlier monitoring data generated by Southern California
Edison Company showed that unacceptably large numbers of fish were
being taken into cooling-water intakes of power plants. As a result, intakes
were redesigned with velocity caps and other changes to reduce entrain-
ment and impingement. Monitoring data were then used to confirm that
the design changes were effective.
    Data generated over the last eight years by the Marine Review Com-
mittee on the environmental impacts of SONGS will be used to make
decisions about changes in the design or operation of the cooling-water sys-
tem. These data will also be used to support the development of mitigation
measures to offset impacts documented through monitoring. The recently
released first-year report for the 301(h) monitoring program performed by
the County Sanitation Districts of Orange County resulted in adjustments
to the districts' permit. In addition, the data in the report suggested that
no changes were needed in the waste discharge or treatment processes.
    By far the greatest effort in data interpretation between the 1950s and
the present has been the work of SCCWRP scientists. Starting with the
1973 report on conditions in the bight and implications for management
(SCCWRP, 1973), their periodic reports and scientific journal publications
have become internationally recognized. Although their work has included
much more than evaluation of routine monitoring data, it has resulted in
improved monitoring methods and in quality control activities that increase
the reliability of the data. In fact, the scientific publications of the majority
of SCCWRP scientists are cautious, if not silent, on interpretation of moni-
toring data with respect to regulatory actions. Instead, their interpretations





                                  136

generally focus on environmental conditions and, to a somewhat lesseri
extent, on possible impacts of pollutants.
    On a smaller scale, the Channel Islands National Park monitoring
program has generated data since 1981 from diving surveys at 14 stations,
conducted primarily by volunteers. These data are used to make decisions
about visitor access, harvesting of resources, and development of the park
resource. As another example, the program conducted by Occidental
College for Southern California Edison was originally related to monitoring
the effects of waste heat discharge from coastal power plants. It has also
yielded useful resource information on a sedentary reef fish community.
This latter example demonstrates that if data were made available scientists
would find monitoring programs useful for filling in information gaps about
marine resources.
    In many instances, the use of monitoring data is not as clearcut as in
the examples just cited. In some cases, it is difficult to document whether
decisions were based on monitoring results, particularly when decisions
were made not to change existing procedures.
    In some instances, disagreements about the interpretation of data call
hamper the ability to make resource management decisions. For example,
during the 1940s and 1950s, major differences of opinion among scientists
working on sardines hindered implementation of the management measures
needed to protect this fishery resource (Baxter, 1982). Scientists from the
U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries contended that year-class size was
independent of the size of the spawning stock and that catch size therefore
had no effect on stock size in subsequent years. California Department
of Fish and Game scientists believed that there was a strong link between
year-class size and spawning stock size. By the time the disagreement was
resolved in 1966 in favor of the Department of Fish and Game, the fishery
had collapsed.
    Complicating such scientific uncertainty is the fact that the societal
implications of resource decisions can be quite extensive. Thus, decisions
based on limited data impose risks that managers have to weigh against
expected benefits and the time constraints of required actions. For exam-
ple, decisions involving the economic livelihood of fishermen who harvest
pelagic fish stocks may require a decade to correct if the result of the
decision is not as expected. In fact, a decade or more may sometimes be
required to produce a signal sufficient to determine if the decision was
correct.
    In addition to scientific uncertainty, institutional limitations can limit
the effective use of monitoring information in decision making. All too
frequently, data reports sent to regulatory agencies are not subjected to
thorough scrutiny and summarized for policy makers and the public. This
is because the human resources and budgets of the regulatory agencies are~





                                   137

inadequate to interpret the growing masses of data generated each year
and translate them into information useful to environmental managers and
policy makers.
    Dischargers and other permittee often perform extensive analysis and
interpretation of monitoring data. However, their reports are usually too
lengthy and detailed to be readily accessible to policy makers and the public.
In most cases, budgets earmarked for data analysis and interpretation by
both the regulatory agencies and the permittees are judged inadequate.
It was the consensus of the case study participants that monitoring data
were incompletely synthesized and inadequately used in decision making.
This is unfortunate because many monitoring reports contain extensive data
sets that are not available in scientific journals even though they are peer
reviewed to rigorous standards. In spite of this, some are suspect because
the quality and quantity of the reviews are not documented. A statement
at the beginning of such reports documenting the review process would
have a favorable payoff in building confidence among the aware lay public
who are trying to sort out technical issues. There are some exceptions
to this generalization (for example, Matta et al., 1986) that provide both
data, frequently from monitoring programs, and analysis of data. These are
widely distributed and are cited in many regulatory documents such as the
301(h) decision documents.
    Another institutional limitation derives from the differing responsibili-
ties of the various regulatory agencies involved in managing monitoring ac-
tivities. The EPA acts primarily as an enforcement and compliance agency.
The state of California, through the State Water Resources Control Board
has primary responsibility for the development of ocean policy in general,
represented by the California ocean plan (State Water Resources Control
Board, 1987). Evaluation of monitoring data is one part of the process
of developing this policy and the specific regulatory actions intended to
implement it. The state board establishes overall policy and the regional
water quality control boards determine individual permit requirements.
    Both the EPA and the regional boards believe that most monitoring
programs are well planned, well executed, and yield data that are useful
in demonstrating compliance and in documenting regulatory changes. The
state board, however, has the additional responsibility of identifying bene-
ficial uses of marine resources and establishing water quality objectives to
protect those uses. The state board staff believe that the question, "Are
beneficial uses being protected?" is of more fundamental importance than
mere compliance, but that monitoring data are not presently adequate to
answer this question. As explained in the next section, this may be because
the available monitoring data are not sufficient to fully address this broader
question and because the specific questions are not asked precisely enough
to guide monitoring efforts.





                                  138

           OVERALL ORGANIZATION OF MONITORING
    The preceding description and analysis of monitoring efforts in the
Southern California Bight show that monitoring has achieved important
successes. It has documented the extent of impacts from point sources such
as power plants and wastewater outfalls. It has tracked the improvement of
gross contamination in areas such as Los Angeles Harbor and the beaches
of Santa Monica Bay. Longer-term studies, such as those carried out at theI
White Point outfall by the County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles, have
provided valuable insights into how human impacts interact with natural
disturbances.
    However, the same analysis shows that the existing monitoring system
does not address all important sources of impacts (e.g., storm drains). In
addition, Figure 5-5 shows that many important resources are affected by
more than one kind of human or natural perturbation. In spite of this,
there are no monitoring programs that focus on resources by integrating
data about the cumulative effects of more than one kind of perturbation.
This is because the monitoring system derives predominantly from a fo-
cus on regulating specific human activities, rather than managing natural
resources. Finally, Figure 5-6 shows that many contaminants and other
sources of change act on time and space scales much larger than those of
the typical monitoring program. As a result, the existing monitoring system
has difficulty resolving bightwide patterns of change that may be just as
important as the localized impacts that are the current focus of monitoring.
    In Chapter 5, four questions were identified as being especially per-
tinent to evaluating the overall success of monitoring in the bight. These
were as follows:
    * Does monitoring address clearly stated management and societal
objectives?
      *Does monitoring address the major environmental problems facing
the bight?
      *Do the spatial and temporal scales of monitoring reflect those of
the major environmental problems?
    a Are monitoring resources allocated effectively both within and
among monitoring programs?
    The foregoing analysis provides the basis for answering these questions.
In each case, the summary answers below are focused on assessing the
performance of the monitoring system as a whole, rather than on individual
monitoring programs.

                              Objectives
    As described previously, there are different kinds of objectives that






k                                 ~~~~~~~~~~139
motivate monitoring, from the broad concerns of the public to the detailed
specifications of individual monitoring programs. These objectives can
be classified as those pertaining to the effects of specific activities (e.g.,
dredging), to the overall status of important resources (e.g., kelp beds),
and of the bight as a whole. Because of the institutional structure of the
regulatory and permitting system, only the first of these is addressed in
any detail by the existing monitoring system. In Figure 5-5, this can be
represented as looking only at each row in isolation, ignoring both columns
and the matrix as a whole.
     While objectives relating to measuring and managing the impacts of
individual activities may not always be clearly stated, they nevertheless are
the unmistakable focus of permits and monitoring programs. In contrast,
important concerns about the status of resources and the bight as a whole
are not manifested in the more detailed objectives that structure monitoring
programs.

                     Major Environmental Problems
     There can be no arguing with the fact that monitoring addresses many
of the major environmental problems facing the bight. However, it is also
clear that the existing monitoring system cannot address other problems
that are just as pressing. These include nonpermitted sources, such as
storm drains and atmospheric input of contaminants. They also include
cumulative impacts stemming from the action of more than one kind of
human or natural perturbation on a single resource. Finally, the existing
monitoring system cannot adequately assess the existence and importance
of large-scale and long-term environmental trends in the bight.
     The importance of these other environmental problems is a result of
two major trends in the bight. First, increasing population and attendant
utilization of marine resources have magnified the potential for cumulative
and large-scale impacts. Sources of contamination and perturbation are
more numerous and more closely spaced than in the past. Second, the
existing monitoring and management system has been remarkably successful
in removing gross pollution from the bight. As a result, concerns about
cumulative impacts and subtle changes over time have become relatively
more important.

                      Spatial and Temporal Scales
    As a general rule of thumb, the spatial and temporal boundaries of a
monitoring program should match those of the phenomena it is attempting
*to monitor. As Figure 5-6 shows, the spatial and temporal boundaries of
exitin monitoring programs match those of some but by no means all of





                                  140

the relevant processes in the bight. As a result, the existing monitoring
system has only a limited ability to resolve trends and changes occurring
on larger time and space scales. Such trends and changes can be natural,
in which case they represent a moving background against which human
impacts must be compared. Large-scale changes can also result from human
impacts that by their nature cannot be restricted to one location (e.g., DDT
contamination).
    The CalCOFI program (e.g., Chelton et al., 1982) and the Bureau
of Land Management study of benthic communities in the bight (e.g.,
Thompson and Jones, 1987) provide examples of the ability of larger-
scale sampling programs to describe important patterns that cannot be
detected by point-source monitoring programs. Because monitoring occurs
throughout the bight, the existing monitoring system has the potential for
measuring events on larger time and space scales. However, this potential
cannot at present be fully realized because separate monitoring programs
are not sufficiently coordinated and integrated.

                  Allocation of Monitoring Resources
    Despite the large amount of time and money (at least $17 million
per year) spent on monitoring in the bight, it is not possible to perform
all the monitoring that would be desirable given unlimited resources. The
available resources should therefore be allocated based on criteria that
prioritize environmental problems and impacts. Such a process should be
based in part on an overall assessment like that summarized in Figure 5-5.
At present, this is not possible. Each monitoring program is developed in-
dependently, and its scope and cost are established in negotiations between
the permittee and the regulatory agencies. As a result, some problems re-
ceive a disproportionate share of monitoring resources while others receive
little or none.

                              SUMMARY
    The analysis of monitoring in the Southern California Bight led to
conclusions and insights about individual programs and about the moni-
toring system as a whole. In general, monitoring programs in the bight
use state-of-the-art methods and produce accurate and reliable data. In
addition, monitoring data have contributed to many important decisions
related to pollution abatement and the management of natural resources.
In general, monitoring has been successful in identi1fing and quantifying
the impacts of such point-source activities as wastewater outfalls and coastal
power plants.
    In spite of these successes, the panel found several shortcomings, some





                                   141

related to the execution of individual programs and some to the institutional
structure of the monitoring system as a whole. 'Me most important of these
were:
    a poorly stated objectives that provided insufficient guidance for mon-
itoring efforts;
    a inability to monitor the effects of activities falling outside the
existing permit structure;
    a inflexibility that inhibits needed adaptability;
    a overemphasis on a permit-by-permit approach to monitoring and
environmental decision making, thus limiting the ability to monitor cumu-
lative and large-scale impacts;
    * insufficient use of statistical design tools in the development of
sampling and measurement plans; and
    * lack of a bightwide data management system to support integration
and synthesis of data from different studies.
    The panel performed a preliminary synoptic assessment of environ-
mental problems in the bight. This assessment, combined with the analysis
of individual programs, led to important conclusions about the structure of
the overall monitoring system. Because the existing system focuses on in-
dividual permitted activities, it is unable to foster the higher level planning
and coordination needed to assess cumulative and larger scale environmen-
tal problems. In addition, the focus on individual human activities makes
it difficult to focus on important resources that are affected by more than
one type of impact. As a result, it is difficult to draw conclusions about
the status of the bight as a whole and about whether beneficial uses of the
marine environment are being protected.







                                  7
     Conclusions and Recommendations
















                           CONCLUSIONS

                      Current Monitoring Effort
    1. The total amount of money and effort expended by public utilities,
private industry, and government agencies in monitoring of water quality,
natural resources, and public health in the Southern California Bight is ex-
traordinarily large. A conservative estimate is that current annual expenses
for monitoring far exceed $17 million (see Chapter 4).
    2. Most water quality monitoring programs are organized around the
outfalls of several large coastal municipal wastewater treatment plants
and electric power generating stations and are elaborately detailed in their
requirements.
    3. The California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation (Cal-
COFI) for natural marine resources in the California Current system and
Southern California Bight has been unparalleled among marine resource
monitoring programs in terms of its commitment to a long-term time-series
assessment. However, station coverage has been reduced by budget cuts.
    4. Significant sources of chemical and microbial contaminants con-
tained in riverine and stormwater discharges to the bight have not been
adequately monitored as part of the marine monitoring system in the bight.




                                  142





                                   143

                      Lack of Program Integration
     5. There are no formal institutional mechanisms for integrating the
findings from the different ongoing monitoring programs. This means that
there is no mechanism for integrating the results from monitoring of various
point sources with each other or with the findings of the resource or public
health monitoring programs.
     6. There is no system for interrelating the findings of various moni-
toring programs to present a coherent picture of the whole. This precludes
evaluating the human impacts of bightwide human inputs in the context
of natural variability, and thus it is difficult to evaluate whether corrective
actions are effective.
    7. There currently is no effective system for reporting findings of
monitoring programs to the public, the scientific community, or policy
makers.
     8. The monitoring programs in specific permits have been designed
to address small-scale discrete questions with little attention paid to the
overall question of the status of natural resources and water quality of the
Southern California Bight as a whole.
    9.  In the past, there have been recommendations for bightwide water
quality, public health, and natural resource monitoring programs. These
recommendations have not been implemented.


                        RECOMMENDATIONS

                         A Regional Approach
    10. The questions of bightwide inputs and their impacts are growing
in importance. Many of them could be addressed in a regional monitoring
program. A regional program should be established that:
    * addresses specific questions about the current environmental con-
dition of the bight and the resources therein, including those associated
with public health impacts, spatial and temporal trends in natural resources,
nonpoint source and riverine contributions, nearshore habitat changes, and
cumulative or areawide impacts of large and small point and nonpoint
source inputs;
    * incorporates standardized sampling, analysis, and data management
methods;
    * establishes a comprehensive data base management system for all
monitoring and resource data in the bight, which could provide access to the
historic and current data needed to perform comprehensive and bightwide
analyses;





                                   144

      *can be facilitated through the coordination of local, state, and
federal entities, which integrate their regulatory, data, and management
needs and responsibilities to optimize the utilization of available resources;
    * can be achieved largely through coordination, integration, and
modification of existing efforts, rather than through the addition of another
layer of monitoring in the bight;
    * can be developed to involve the public and the scientific community
as participants in the program;
    * includes built-in mechanisms to ensure that its conclusions are
effectively communicated to the public, the scientific community, and reg-
ulatory agencies; and
    * includes mechanisms to require periodic review and to allow easy
alteration or redirection of monitoring efforts when they are justified, based
on the results of the monitoring or new information from other sources.
The effort to develop a regional program will need to address the needs of
the agencies and parties involved in monitoring; synthesis of existing data
and information in order to construct meaningful questions and null hy-
potheses; drafting of an organizational framework; drafting of a monitoring
program; and allocating the financial resources required to carry out the
program. If properly implemented, the benefits and the costs of a regional
monitoring program can be shared by all sectors of society. However, it
should also be noted that a regional approach ultimately has to consider
the effects of competing uses on land, water, and air quality, and tradeoffs
between short- and long-term costs and benefits.









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     ecosystem off southern California. In Water Chlorination: Environmental Impact and
     Health Effects, R. L. Jolley, H. Gorchev, and D. H. Hamilton, Jr., eds. Ann Arbor,
     Michigan: Ann Arbor Science Publishers. Pp. 267-290.
Young, D. R., T C. Heesen, and D. J. McDermott. 1981. Synoptic survey of chlorinated
     hydrocarbon inputs to the Southern California Bight. Volumes I and II. Summary
     Report: NTIS No. PB81196792. Springfield, Virginia: U.S. Department of Commerce.
Young, D. R. and T K. Jan. 1977. Fire fallout of metals off California. Mar. Poll. Bull.
     8:109-112.






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Young, D. R., T K. Jan, and T C. Heesen. 1978. Cycling of trace metal and chlorinated
     hydrocarbon wastes in the Southern California Bight. In Estuarine Interactions, M. L.
     Wiley, ed. New York: Academic Press. Pp. 481-496.
Young, D. R., D. J. McDermott, and T. C. Heesen. 1976. Aerial fallout of DDT in Southern
     California. Bull. Environ. Contamin. Toxicol. 16:604-611.
Young, D. R., C. S. Young, and G. E. Hlavka. 1973. Sources of trace metals from
     highly-urbanized Southern California to the adjacent marine ecosystem. In Cycling
     and Control of Metals. Cincinnati: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National
     Environmental Research Center. Pp. 21-39.
Young, P. H. 1969. The California partyboat fishery 1947-1967. California Department of
     Fish and Game Bulletin 145. 91 p.
Zedler, 3. B. 1982. The Ecology of Southern California Coastal Salt Marshes: A Community
     Profile. FWS/OBS-81/54. Slidell, Louisiana: Fish and Wildlife Service, National Coastal
     Ecosystems Team. 110 pp.
Zedler, J. B. and C. S. Nordby. 1986. The Ecology of Tijuana Estuary, California: An
     Estuarine Profile. Biological Report 85(7.5). Slidell, Louisiana: Fish and Wildlife
     Service, National Coastal Ecosystems Team. 104 p.




































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