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OCR for page 116
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 identity 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 eRective
planning and implementation. There is a broad consensus in the mon-
itoring community that programs today are, in general, vastly improved
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 monitoring
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
OCR for page 117
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.
The strengths of the monitoring system include:
· an established legal requirement for addressing environmental is-
sues and problems;
· important contributions to environmental decision making;
· active links to ongoing research programs;
· innovative monitoring program designs and techniques;
data;
high-quality methods for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting
· 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;
· poorly defined monitoring endpoints or decision criteria, especially
whole;
· sampling designs that do not take into account spatial and temporal
scales of natural variability;
· 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-
ments in the light of new information;
for narrative 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
OCR for page 118
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. 1b monitor degradation in fish
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119
communities, a program could legitimately focus on any of the following
parameters:
diversity,
species richness,
community trophic structure,
relative abundance of numerically dominant species,
population sizes of numerically dominant species,
population sizes of trophically important species,
size-age relationships,
· reproductive potential as measured by gonad weight,
· mortality of one or more species,
incidence of fin rot, tumors, and other abnormalities, or
body burdens of specific contaminants.
.
Although these are all measurable parameters that may be indicators
of degradation, they do not define it. 1b 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 Agengy (EPA) doc-
ument titled Objectives and Rationale for the County Sanitation Dismcts of
Orange County 301(h) Monitonng 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
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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 ox
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 leYels, and over [actors 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 54. 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.
OCR for page 121
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
Listnolobus 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 me 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
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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 1 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 storm 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., Able 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.
Inflexibility
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
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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 28 294.
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 shouts 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
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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 come
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 It 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 rocly bottom,
where benthic grab sampling was impossible. The city requested that it
be allowed to stop sampling El-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
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'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.
The 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.
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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-
itonng program around their wastewater outfall. Within or very near the
sampling grid are other biological and physicaUchemical 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
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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
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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-
dardized regulatory reports and automatically format data for submission
to ODES. Finally, the systems incorporate links to a variety of analytical
tools, such as spreadsheets and analysis and graphics software.
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:
.
store corrected and updated archival versions of important data
sets so that all analysts access the same version of the data;
· 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;
· 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:
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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
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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. Autonomic standards invariably differ among different
studies. This 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
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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 NOAA's 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 regulator actions. Instead, their interpretations
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generally focus on environmental conditions and, to a somewhat lesser
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 can
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 uncertain 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
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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 permitters 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, "~e
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.
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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 the
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~ 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:
objectives?
Does monitoring address clearly stated management and societal
· 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 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
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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
existing monitoring programs match those of some but by no means all of
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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 abilitr 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 permitted 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 identifying 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
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related to the execution of individual programs and some to the institutional
structure of the monitoring system as a whole. The most important of these
were:
.
storing efforts;
poorly stated objectives that provided insufficient guidance for mon
· inability to monitor the effects of activities falling outside the
existing permit structure;
· inflexibility that inhibits needed adaptability;
· 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.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
monitoring data
