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Last
year, the County of San Francisco, in partnership
with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission,
initiated a weekly monitoring program for ocean and
bay shoreline locations. The monitoring
program is funded in part through an Environmental Protection Agency National
Beach Guidance and Performance Criteria for Recreational
Waters grant. Overall, the County monitors
eleven locations on a weekly basis year-round, from Aquatic Park Beach, projection
of Larkin St. to Ocean Beach at Sloat Blvd. For this
annual report card, Heal the Bay could only include
four of the
eleven monitoring locations due to an insufficient amount of data. The County
began their weekly monitoring for all three indicators
at all locations in October 2003. In the future Heal
the Bay will be
including all eleven oceanside monitoring locations in the Beach Report Card.
For additional water quality information visit the
San
Francisco County Department of Environmental Health website.
The
four locations covered this year are: Aquatic Park
Beach at Hyde Street Pier, Aquatic Park Beach at 211
Station, Crissy Field Beach East (202.4 Station),
and Crissy
Field Beach West (202.2 Station). Dry weather water
quality at these beaches was highly variable. Of
the four water quality
monitoring locations, Aquatic Park Beach at Hyde Street Pier (A) and Crissy Field
Beach West (B) received good-to-excellent water quality
marks. Both Aquatic Park Beach at 211 Station (F)
and Crissy
Field Beach East (D) had poor water quality.
Wet
weather water quality at the four monitoring locations
in San Francisco County was poor, with Aquatic Park
Beach at Hyde Street Pier (B) receiving the best
grade. The remaining wet weather
grades were: Aquatic Park Beach at 211 Station (F), Crissy Field Beach East (F),
and Crissy Field
Beach West (C).
Sewage
Spill Summary
Given San Francisco County's unique infrastructure
(a combined sewer and storm drain system), overflows
were not all uniform in nature, with the volume and
beach impacted differing from location to location.
Therefore, Heal the Bay broke San Francisco County
into four subregions to provide a more localized assessment
of the overflows. The four subregions are: Aquatic
Park Beach, Crissy Field Beach, Baker and China Beach,
and Ocean Beach. There were approximately 39 overflows
in wet weather for the regions that resulted in beach
closures, with Aquatic Park Beach leading all sub-regions
with 12. Both Crissy Field Beach and Baker/China
Beach had 10 spills that led to beach closures, and Ocean
Beach had seven, the least amount of overflows among the
subregions.
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