- Programs
Monitoring Pollutants
The Clean Water Program conducts water quality monitoring on behalf of its member agencies throughout Alameda County, coordinating with other stormwater programs throughout the region.
The Clean Water Program conducts water quality monitoring on behalf of its member agencies throughout Alameda County to assess water quality conditions, track pollutants, and evaluate stormwater impacts on local creeks and the San Francisco Bay. Monitoring supports compliance with the Municipal Regional Stormwater Permit (MRP) and provides a consistent basis for understanding conditions and trends over time. Monitoring requirements are defined by MRP Provision C.8.
In addition, the Clean Water Program, in coordination with other stormwater programs and partners, supports the San Francisco Bay Regional Monitoring Program (RMP), which evaluates long-term trends in Bay water quality and conducts targeted studies to address regionally significant and emerging water water quality questions.
What We Monitor
The Clean Water Program conducts a range of monitoring activities to evaluate water quality conditions, track priority pollutants, and assess stormwater-related impacts in urban watersheds.
- Low Impact Development (LID) features are designed to manage stormwater runoff close to where it falls by mimicking natural hydrology and reducing the transport of pollutants to waterways. The Clean Water Program supports LID monitoring to evaluate pollutant removal performance and hydrologic benefits, and to better understand how these features function once constructed and operating.
- Trash is carried by stormwater can harm aquatic life, degrade habitat, and affect community use of local waterways. The Clean Water Program conducts trash monitoring to evaluate the effectiveness of full trash capture devices in reducing trash discharges to creeks and the San Francisco Bay.
- Mercury and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent legacy pollutants that accumulate in sediment and aquatic organisms. Monitoring often includes sediment sampling, which helps identify where these pollutants are present in the urban environment and supports efforts to reduce risks to water quality and public health associated with Bay-caught fish.
- Pesticides detected in local creeks may originate from residential and commercial sources and can be highly toxic to aquatic life. Monitoring helps track the presence of these compounds and supports evaluation of long-term trends in urban waterways.
Monitoring Reports
Monitoring results are documented and submitted through formal reports required by the MRP with applicable monitoring data also submitted annually to the California Environmental Data Exchange Network (CEDEN).
- Urban Creeks Monitoring Reports (UCMRs) provide the annual summary of all monitoring data. These reports summarize results by Water Year (October – September) and support evaluation of conditions and trends across Alameda County and the region.
- Integrated Monitoring Reports (IMRs) are reports that integrate and interpret monitoring results in Alameda County and across Bay Area stormwater programs. IMRs span multiple MRP terms and support longer term, regional assessments of water quality conditions and trends.