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Creeks Division updates committee on 'Clean Streets, Clean Seas' microplastics study funded by NOAA Sea Grant
Summary
City staff and partners reported progress on a $1.2 million NOAA Sea Grant-funded study testing whether street sweeping and other interventions can reduce microplastic loads from urban runoff to creeks and the coast. Staff described sampling completed to date, laboratory methods and next steps.
Jill Murray, creeks supervisor for the City of Santa Barbara, updated the Creeks Advisory Committee on the city’s Clean Streets, Clean Seas research project, a NOAA National Sea Grant-funded study that aims to measure microplastic loads in urban runoff and test whether street sweeping and other practices can reduce those loads.
Murray said the project is a roughly $1.2 million grant shared among multiple partners and that Measure B contributed a $50,000 match for one contract. She named principal partners as the University of California, Santa Barbara (including Dr. Trish Holden’s laboratory and the Materials Research Laboratory), Cascade Water Resources, Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP), San Francisco Estuary Institute, the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research, WSP and USC Sea Grant.
“Microplastics are less than 5 millimeters,” Murray said, and the project focuses largely on smaller fractions that are most environmentally mobile.…
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