Creeks advisory committee backs FY27 water-quality research and monitoring plan

The Santa Barbara Creeks Advisory Committee on Tuesday voted to support the Creeks Division's fiscal year 2027 annual water quality research and monitoring plan, a staff-led program that prioritizes permit-required monitoring and expanded studies of long-term trends, green infrastructure and microbial source tracking.

The committee approved a motion to support the staff recommendation by voice vote after a presentation from Laurie of the Creeks Division, who outlined program goals: meet grant and permit monitoring requirements, assess pollutant sources, evaluate the effectiveness of city programs such as street sweeping, and track how climate change and sea-level rise affect creek conditions.

"We want to continue to monitor at our integrator sites for all 3 types of surfactants, and compare it to a contract lab that does a more sophisticated analysis to make sure our kits are accurate," Laurie said, describing recent sampling across Arroyo Burro, Sycamore Creek, Mission Creek and Laguna Channel. She reported the team generally found anionic surfactants (MBAS, methylene blue active substances) to be predominant and cautioned that visible foam at Arroyo Burro appeared driven in part by aeration at a waterfall rather than higher concentrations at that site.

The FY27 plan keeps meeting the city's general permit obligations as its top priority: planned work includes dry-weather outfall testing, 303(d)-targeted sampling of impaired waters, load-reduction studies and bioassessments. Laurie said targeted sampling aims to generate robust data on listed pollutants (examples cited included dissolved oxygen, pH, toxicity and historical chlordane detections in Mission Creek) to support potential delisting where warranted.

Staff also described new or expanded research efforts. An evaluation of 11 permeable-paver projects installed between 2011 and 2016 showed that many tested locations continue to meet infiltration performance expectations; Laurie said preliminary ASTM infiltration tests showed most sites exceeded the rainfall-intensity benchmarks used in Santa Barbara and that the division plans to expand testing and include permeable concrete and vegetation effects. The committee also heard plans to start the Riparian Rapid Assessment Method (RIPRAM) on Mission Creek this year to generate standardized scores of watershed health.

On laboratory and field instruments, Laurie reported a side-by-side comparison of an IDEXX cartridge-based indicator-bacteria analyzer with the city's quanti-tray lab showed E. coli results "within specifications," while an enterococci cartridge update from the vendor could reduce the number of samples the city sends to its commercial lab. A rented instrument (referred to as the Kraken) is undergoing troubleshooting; the comparison study was deferred to FY27 pending installation.

Committee members followed with technical questions about bird-refuge oxygen events, high-tide influences, and the relative merits of fecal indicator bacteria versus DNA-based human markers for microbial source tracking. Staff noted an ongoing large sample campaign (Bight 23) in which 60 surf-zone and creek samples were taken at Arroyo Burro/Cliff Drive and are now at a county lab for extraction; potential DNA-marker results could inform follow-up sampling.

The committee's approval does not, in itself, create a new regulation; it was a committee-level endorsement of the staff plan. Laurie said next steps include finalizing sampling plans, conducting the sampling, presenting results at stormwater-awareness events and publishing the FY26 annual water-quality research and monitoring report in January.

The committee will not meet in July, staff said, and a separate 25-year retrospective report from the Creeks Division is expected to be posted within weeks.