Mark Gold, Heal the Bay
Michael Lyons, Xavier Swamikannu, LA Regional Water Quality Control Board
Guang-yu Wang, Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project
Cathy Striker, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Kathryn Curtis, Paul Johansen, Port of Los Angeles
Earl Byron, CH2M Hill
Tim Piasky, Los Angeles County Department of Public Works
Lisa Kay, MEC

The Watershed Subcommittee met to consider how to spend its share ($333,000) of the funds that the Contaminated Sediments Task Force anticipates receiving from the $2,033,000 allocated for data gaps studies in the 2000-01 state budget. Our finance letter proposal had estimated that $133,000 would be spent to analyze and integrate existing stormwater data to correlate contaminant levels and mass emission rates with land uses and that $200,000 would be spent to collect and analyze stormwater runoff and accumulated sediments to identify specific facilities that contribute significantly to high contamination levels. The Subcommittee members were charged with developing a more detailed scope of work for these studies.

The Subcommittee members agreed that there is a pressing need to analyze and integrate the monitoring data currently available from the many studies conducted over the past several years to evaluate stormwater runoff and other sources of contaminants. As a starting point, the subcommittee reviewed the Draft Scope of Work for Further Analysis of Existing Stormwater Data, prepared by Mark Gold about a year and a half ago.

The Subcommittee agreed that we need to analyze and integrate data for each of the watersheds of concern: 1) Ballona Creek/Marina del Rey, 2) Dominguez Channel + Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach, Cerritos Channel, Alamitos Bay, 3) Los Angeles River. We should focus on the contaminants of concern (toxicity, trace metals, PAHs, DDT, PCB, chlordane) that appear in the sediments that need to be dredged [Note: we may wish to do the entire 8080 list of organics, since the cost may be the same as just doing selected constituents]. We should make sure that we identify and acquire monitoring data from all major sources, including: Los Angeles County Department of Public Works (stormwater monitoring required by NPDES permit), Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (industrial dischargers covered by general permit [note:only a small percentage are required to monitor for our contaminants of concern]), Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (stormwater studies and data compilations), Environmental Protection Agency (Permit Compliance System has inventory of NPDES dischargers and mass loading computations based on actual monitoring data, possibly for all dischargers or just major dischargers), Toxic Release Inventory (data is available electronically, but needs to be checked for relevance), CALTRANS (they have monitoring data related to transportation uses, but have been reluctant to release until study is completed [note: may require Regional Board intervention to access data], aerial deposition data (LACDPW study conducted by UCLA, SCCWRP), UCLA (stormwater runoff studies).

The Subcommittee members agreed that it would be extremely useful to combine the monitoring data from these studies into a common format to facilitate data analysis and provide a mechanism for storing monitoring data from future studies. This could be accomplished via a distributed database or as a centralized database (e.g., housed at SCCWRP or the LA Regional Board) – the key is ensure the use of standardized formats for electronic data storage. It may be possible to combine efforts with the Sediment Thresholds Subcommittee, which is planning to combine sediment chemistry and toxicity data into an electronic database, to reduce the cost of this task.

The Subcommittee recommended early completion of the data integration and database creation tasks. The group agreed that we cannot forecast the actual cost of these tasks. Once we further refine the scope of work into a Request for Proposals, the responses from interested parties will tell us what it will cost to complete these tasks.

Once the monitoring data sets have been integrated and analyzed, the subcommittee members would like to use this information to review the existing stormwater monitoring programs, particularly the NPDES-mandated Los Angeles County Department of Public Works program, which is up for renewal in about 18 months, to design a model monitoring program for the future to gather the right information. We do not expect to develop an RFP or award a contract until after the studies described above have been completed.

The Subcommittee members are interested in conducting additional sampling to identify specific facilities that contribute significantly to high contamination levels. However, we believe that the tasks outlined above have a higher priority and should be completed first. If funds are still available, we would proceed to develop an RFP for this task.

The Watershed Subcommittee will coordinate these studies with those being conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to avoid duplication of effort and complete as many tasks as possible. The Subcommittee also will coordinate with the Los Angeles Regional Board’s TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) Unit to seek partnerships to carry out the required tasks.

The next Watershed Subcommittee meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, July 25^th, 10 am to noon, at the Los Angeles Regional Board’s office.