It's hard to imagine a region where water quality plays a more significant role on public health, ecosystem integrity, quality of life and economy than San Diego - a fact that is not lost upon its residents, who recently identified water quality protection as the highest priority for the City of San Diego.
Despite the importance of clean water, however, water pollution in its many forms continues to plague the region. Since 1976, the number of impaired water bodies not meeting federal standards in the San Diego region has more than doubled with each subsequent release of the triennial Clean Water Act (CWA) §303(d) list.
Equally disturbing is that despite the allocation of significant resources to monitoring efforts, there remains an inadequate understanding of local water quality, undermining our ability to properly manage these vital resources. A contributing factor to this problem is that while water quality and related monitoring efforts have been undertaken in the region for many years, there is at present no means to effectively manage and integrate data collected by regulatory agencies, academic institutions, businesses and non-profit organizations.
Gathering and managing sufficient data to gain a comprehensive and objective view of regional water quality issues remains a formidable task. San Diego Coastkeeper works with a wide variety of regulatory agencies, academic institutions, businesses and non-profit organizations along with dedicated volunteers to supplement the limited resources available in order to protect sensitive ecosystems, identify and abate pollution sources, track the effectiveness of implemented actions, and prevent further degradation of our precious water resources.