In conjunction with UC Davis' Engineering Division and the San Mateo County Resource Conservation District (RCD), Balance is leading key portions of a 3-year pioneering grant from the State Water Resources Control Board to assess the sources and loadings of bacteria that impair uses in and near Pillar Point Harbor. Our responsibilities include (a) quantifying streamflow, with related bacterial and sediment loads, from the two main streams tributary to the harbor, storm drains and Pillar Point Marsh, (b) evaluating ground water fluctuations and movement, including its role in supporting baseflow in several storm drains known to be major sources of bacteria, as well as support for wetlands that may remove (or, through their avifauna contribute to) pathogen influxes to the harbors, and (c) measuring the role(s) of harbor circulation on bacterial loadings using fluorescent tracer dyes and quantitative evaluation of wind speed and direction, swell, tide, season, and rainfall on currents within the inner and outer harbors. Pathogen sampling is being conducted by the RCD, building on several prior years of monitoring by Surfriders and County staff, with microbial sourcing by PSR-based DNA provided by UC Davis staff.

Santa Cruz County has committed to sustained efforts for reducing soil loss and the amount of fine sediment entering its stream system. This effort, which builds on years of work by County staff, is one of the largest watershed-scale erosion- and sediment-control programs on the west coast. County staff, supported by grant from the State of California, have asked Balance to establish, test, and conduct initial years of sampling for a program designed to quantify and evaluate long-term changes in both bed sedimentation and in sediment transport. For bed sedimentation, Balance geomorphologists will direct measurements of bed permeability, embeddedness, net accumulation and downcutting at monumented sections, and possibly mineralogic tracing to discrete geologic sources. Suspended-sediment sampling using Federal Interagency Sedimentation Program protocols, including concurrent stream gaging, will be used to establish transport rating curves, which allow quantification of long-term trends in the amount of sediment moved at a given flow. A key aspect of this program is using sediment-rating curves to identify 'episodic conditions', such as the temporary increases in sediment transport and bed sedimentation which follow major storms, watershed-scale wildfires, large landslides, earthquakes and droughts; prior research by Balance staff during the past several decades provides the documentation to discriminate episodic sedimentation. This work is being conducted in conjunction with Dr. Andy Fisher at UC Santa Cruz Earth Sciences and the Coastal Watershed Council, a home-grown non-governmental organization with more than 10 years of citizen stream-monitoring experience.

Under a grant from Santa Cruz County, Balance Hydrologics designed several alternative on-site systems to control chronic nitrate loadings from households in very sandy areas of the San Lorenzo River watershed. These sandy areas are the source of nearly all of the nitrate entering local streams. With funding provided by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, a demonstration project comparing nitrogen concentrations in percolate beneath conventional, deep leachfields with concentrations beneath very shallow leachfields was installed by Balance and is currently being monitored by County staff. Monitoring uses an array of 27 pressure-vacuum lysimeters in conjunction with standard soils and ground water tests. Quantitative estimates of nitrate releases to the aquifer will provide critical data to County planners to aid in development of a basin-wide Nitrogen Management Plan. Demonstration of a promising nitrogen control measure reinforces the County's goal of encouraging on-site system renovation through community education.

Balance Hydrologics, Inc., in conjunction with San Diego State University and the University of San Diego, received a three-year grant from EPA Region IX to develop a manual for assessment of vernal pools and for developing related approaches for their protection. The manual is based on the Corps of Engineers new Hydrogeomorphic Method (HGM), which uses approximately 40 to 50 functional values to classify and evaluate wetlands, is directed by Prof. Ellen Bauder. Balance's responsibilities included hydrology, geomorphology, sedimentation, hydrogeology, and (with Marie Simovich of UCSD) water quality. Balance is responsible for all hydrology, soils, and most water-quality variables, and for developing a classification for Southern California within which the HGM guidebook can be applied.

Based on land-use analysis and nitrate budgets for the San Lorenzo River watershed developed by Balance hydrologists and soil scientists, the Regional Water Quality Control Board called for development of control measures to reduce nitrate delivery from stables in sandy soils adjacent to the River. Technical analyses provided by Balance staff led the County Environmental Health Service to implement several manure management measures focusing on dry-storage and disposal. An additional demonstration project using arrays of shallow pressure-vacuum lysimeters to quantify nitrate releases from conventionally-managed paddocks, and evaluate potential reductions in nitrate delivery resulting from modified animal and waste management practices, was successfully installed and monitored.

Approximately 800 horses are boarded or pastured in the Upper Francisquito watershed, above Stanford, principally in the town of Woodside, California. Balance Hydrologics staff are tracking how existing practices affect chronic and instantaneous/acute concentrations of nutrients and other key constituents in several tributaries of San Francisquito Creek. Complete streamflow and nutrient recording gages have been established. We are also sampling conventional storm runoff from highways and turfed areas, such that these influence may be separated from those of the horse population. Research is funded through 2004 by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, under the aegis of the San Francisquito Creek Coordinated Resource Management Program (CRMP) and the Peninsula Conservation Center.

Under a grant from the Natural Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Balance Hydrologics participated in developing the hydrology, water quality, geomorphology and sediment sections of a standard manual for screening feasibility of dam removal as part of restoring salmon and steelhead runs along the Pacific Coast. The manual is intended to guide initial investigations and feasibility of removing dams from streams used for salmonid migration. Principal investigators include Dr. Michael McGowan (aquatic ecology), Barry Hecht (physical factors), Bud Abbott (salmon and steelhead biology) and Bruce Lord (economic and institutional considerations), with primary funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Federation, with support from the Marin Municipal Water District and the Tiburon Romberg Center.

On behalf of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve at Stanford University, Jonathan Owens and Barry Hecht are measuring the inflows of water, sediment, and salts into Searsville Lake, and identifying likely post-sedimentation ecological effects. Alternate ways of managing the spillway and splash boards to affect the final configuration of the fully sedimented lake are being explored. Parallel efforts by Jennifer Harden of USGS chronicled the chemical composition of the sediments using cores extracted from the lake bed.

Under a grant from the EPA, Balance Hydrologics is developing a screening sediment budget for the Pilarcitos Creek watershed to identify the tributaries contributing debris to this sediment-impaired system. We are monitoring suspended and bedload sediment near the mouths of 7 major subwatersheds affected by a variety of land uses and in diverse geologic settings. Subwatersheds are then compared based on the sediment loads conveyed at a given streamflow ('sediment-rating curves), with adjustments for drainage area. Results will be used to select pilot subwatersheds for detailed on-the-ground inventories of sediment sources in this basin, south of San Francisco, supporting a significant run of steelhead.