Developing Objectives for the Ground Water Quality Monitoring Network of the Salinas River

Abstract

AbstractThis article describes how objectives were developed and applied to design a ground water quality monitoring network for the Salinas River drainage basin in central California. Four agencies worked together: the USGS as network designer, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board as network manager, and Monterey and San Luis Obispo county agencies as data providers. After investigating the basin's ground water quality problems, a list of objectives was developed. These objectives were written as concise statements. The network designers and managers arranged the objectives in the order of importance and set priorities for them. An ideal network was designed to meet all of the monitoring objectives. In the ideal network exercise, budget and manpower constraints were ignored. Each monitoring location was chosen for a specific objective or group of objectives. The ideal network was compared with the existing network to identify where both more and less monitoring was needed. Then a proposed network was chosen. The ideal and existing networks were composited to produce the proposed network, but budget and manpower were considered. To keep the network at a realistic size, monitoring was only recommended to meet the most important objectives. Existing monitoring sites were retained to meet any of the objectives.