Nearshore NPDES Studies

In accordance with NPDES permit requirements, MBC conducts ongoing offshore marine monitoring programs for 12 coastal generating stations from San Diego to Ventura Counties. MBC has been involved with many of these programs since the early 1970s. The biannual monitoring programs include sample collection and analysis of the biological resources, water quality, and sediment characteristics. The biological tasks include intertidal surveys, fish and macroinvertebrate trawls, fish transects, benthic infauna, and macrobiota studies. Water quality monitoring includes both physical and chemical measurements. Physical measurements consist of ebb and flood tide sampling profiles of temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, salinity, fluorescence, and light transmission; chemical measurements include priority pollutants, heavy metal and organics analyses, sediment grain size distribution, and total organic carbon content analyses. The results of all analyses and trends are reported in annual monitoring reports to the regulatory agencies.