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Data Regulates Regulators
When local regulators ponder giving the go-ahead to an oil refinery wanting to discharge effluent into the Bay or a developer carving out a new shoreline park, they often consult the RMP. What the RMP - the six-year old Regional Monitoring Program that regularly collects data on contaminants and water quality at 22 stations around the Bay - tells them is how local conditions may or may not bear on the project.
"It gives us information about pollutant concentrations in different compartments of the Bay, so we know our boundary conditions and background levels," says the S.F. Regional Water Quality Board's Kim Taylor. Knowing what's already in the aquatic environment - the "background" - is key to setting appropriate targets for reducing pollutants.
Over the years, the Board has clearly looked to the RMP - one of the first methodologically consistent, long-term data sets on current Bay conditions - for a reality check on their objectives for water quality, discharges and sediment disposal. "The RMP tells us our current mercury objective is violated every time the winds and tides kick up, so we know something is wrong with that objective, that we have to change it to something more meaningful," says Taylor. RMP data has also highlighted cases where water quality standards are too far above or below background levels in the Bay.
How the Regional Board uses the RMP's information has always been a big question for the 68 federal, state and local agencies and businesses that sponsor the program to the tune of $2.9 million a year. Its most recent and prominent use, says Taylor, is in the Board's work to produce the biennial water quality assessment for the Bay region. The assessment, required by the Clean Water Act, identifies waters in which beneficial uses (recreation, shipping, drinking etc.) are impaired by pollution, and lists specific pollutants requiring action. In conducting the assessment, the Board examined the RMP data on conditions and contaminants in the water column, sediments and bivalves to see, according to Taylor, if water quality standards are being met. "It plays a fairly central role as either a deciding factor in the weight of evidence or as a clear cut indicator that something is or isn't a problem," she says.
Indeed when the Board sent its draft assessment up to the regulatory ladder to U.S. EPA and to interested parties for review, the resulting comments led the Board back to the RMP. BayKeeper, for example, wanted Pacheco and Coyote Creeks, and the Napa and Petaluma Rivers, to be added to the list of impaired water bodies because of contamination found at nearby RMP monitoring stations. "I used the RMP data to see if there was merit to their comments," says the Board's Lila Tang. "Our conclusion was that those stations were more in the tidal zone, and thus did not really represent conditions in the rivers themselves."
The Board also consults the RMP on a project-specific level. When Cattelus applied for a permit to excavate and fill a 50-foot buffer zone for the Eastshore Park, Board staff used ambient contaminant concentrations in sediment identified in the RMP to specify clean fill levels. When the Army needed direction on how much to clean up a salt marsh at the Hamilton airfield, the Board instructed it to use data from nearby RMP stations for comparison. When a PG&E employee alleged that his supervisors had been directing him to siphon off PCB-laden oil from natural gas lines into Santa Clara County creeks for 28 years, the Board used RMP data to advise PG&E on how to check up on itself. The company wanted to investigate whether there had been any environmental impacts from the alleged blow offs, and submitted a plan for sampling water and sediments in the creeks to the Board. From the RMP, the Board could tell that the PCB detection limits PG&E planned to use were much too high compared to background levels in the area. Previous PCB research conducted by RMP participant Walter Jarman had also identified a unique PCB source - with a fingerprint visible only using by certain testing techniques - plaguing the South Bay. "With ten years of RMP data right on the shelf, I could tell PG&E right off the top of my head how far to drop the detection limit and what analytical technology to use," says the Board's Khalil Abu-Saba.
Another example of recent RMP roles in decision-making concerns Chevron's application for a NPDES (discharge) permit. Chevron has a deepwater outfall and facilities that do a good job of diffusing and mixing its effluent with receiving waters. As a result, the oil company qualifies for a 10:1 dilution credit in which pollutants in its effluent can basically be ten times more concentrated than that of a company discharging to shallow waters with no turbulence or mixing. "I reviewed RMP data upstream, downstream and close to the point of discharge to get a feel for the existing quality of Chevron's receiving waters and to evaluate the level of the dilution credit. It helped me make a best professional judgment that we can defend," says the Board's Keyvan Moghbel.
Taylor adds that RMP information provides "added value" to some of the Board's more detailed research studies on sediment transport, hydrodynamics and how pollutants move through the system. Contaminants such as mercury, PCBs and dioxin have been moving up the food chain into fish, according to recent Board studies, leading to a state health advisory on fish consumption. The RMP is now following up with further fish testing and consumption studies necessary for state health and environmental agencies to fine tune the advisory.
"The RMP is invaluable in terms of feedback on our policies," concludes Taylor.
Contact: Kim Taylor (510)622-2426
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