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Maryland’s revised Comprehensive Monitoring Strategy calls for more resources to identify the specific sources of pollution and find cost-effective opportunities to restore water quality throughout Maryland.
The revisions are a mid-course update of a 2004 document developed to guide the statewide water quality monitoring efforts over the course of a decade. The Strategy describes existing programs, highlights significant shifts in the monitoring approach, and outlines a work plan for refinements over the coming years.
Existing programs include monitoring shellfish harvesting waters and bathing beaches for bacteria contamination, monitoring fish tissue for toxic substances used to establish fish consumption advisories, monitoring drinking water supplies, monitoring trends to assess long-term changes in water quality, and reactive monitoring to investigate the causes of fish kills and other unusual events.
Since the late 1990s, a significant portion of the State monitoring strategy has been devoted to supporting the development of Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) in impaired water bodies. The monitoring was used to characterize the impaired water bodies and the pollution entering them. This data was then used to develop models predicting the maximum allowable pollutant loads that still meet water quality standards.
Now that many TMDLs have been established, Maryland is undergoing a strategic shift in monitoring emphasis from supporting TMDL development to supporting TMDL implementation. That means more monitoring resources will be devoted to finding the specific sources of pollution, identifying cost-effective restoration opportunities, and documenting water quality improvements in response to implementation.
Consistent with this shift is a regional evaluation of how future monitoring resources will be allocated in support of the Chesapeake Bay restoration. In broad terms, the Bay Program partners are weighing whether more monitoring resources should be allocated away from the tidal waters of the Bay to the non-tidal rivers, which are closer to the pollution sources that impact the Bay. Again, this potential shift is motivated by a desire to focus on restoration actions and to be able to evaluate the success of cleanup efforts.
The revised Strategy highlights the importance of monitoring data and provides specific guidance on how to evaluate the effectiveness of implementation efforts, especially those supported by the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays 2010 Trust Fund. This is a challenge, because it is difficult to detect improvements in water quality without devoting a large amount of resources that some argue could be invested in restoration activities rather than monitoring. The revised Strategy will help ensure that Maryland strikes the proper balance.
A greater investment of monitoring resources to support the protection of unimpaired waters is another strategic change. Although the State has numerous programs designed to protect these waters, including an anti-degradation policy designed to protect high-quality waters, the proof of their effectiveness is in the monitoring data.
The revised Strategy is scheduled to be provided to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its review in the fall. Click here for more information on their review.
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