Safe to Swim - Research Links

New Recreational Water Quality Criteria

• EPA's nationally recommended recreational water quality criteria
  Protect human health in inland and coastal waters. The criteria are designed to protect primary contact recreation, such as swimming, surfing, and diving.
  
  
• California Bacterial Objective Project
  The State Water Resources Control Board is proposing a statewide control program to protect recreational users from the effects of pathogens in California water bodies. The program would be adopted as amendments to both the Inland Surface Water, Enclosed Bays and Estuaries Plan and the California Ocean Plan. Significant proposed program elements may include: new water quality objectives for both fresh and marine waters based on newly released United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) criteria; a reference beach/natural source exclusion process and high flow exemptions; and revised beach notification requirements.

New Non-Culture Fecal Indicator Bacteria Methods

• Meeting Report
  Knowledge and Gaps in Developing Microbial Criteria for Inland Recreational Waters
  
  
• Rapid Detection of Microbial Contamination of Water
  Application of Molecular Technologies to Source and Potable Water Monitoring
  
  
• Proposal - Rapid Detection of Microbial Contamination of Water
  Application of Molecular Technologies to Source and Potable Water Monitoring
  
  
• A Review of Technologies for Rapid Detection of Bacteria in Recreational Waters
  
  
• UCLA Engineers Develop Faster Method to Detect Bacterial Contamination in Coastal Waters
  Method cuts testing time from a day or more to less than an hour.
  

Microbial Source Studies

• The California Microbial Source Identification Manual: A Tiered Approach to Identifying Fecal Pollution Sources to Beaches
  Provides guidance for cost-effectively identifying sources of fecal contamination within a watershed. The manual is based on a hypothesis-driven and tiered approach, in which the user implements the least expensive options first and more expensive tools only when sufficient uncertainty warrants their use.

California Water Quality Collaboration Network Webinars

• Developments in Microbial Source Tracking: California's Source ID Manual, and US EPA tests (1/15/15)
• Topic Page and Agenda
• Streaming Video
• Full Video
• Presentation by Mauricio Larenas and Grace Anderson
  
  
• Microbial Source Tracking (MST) (3/24/10)
  • Topic Page with Agenda
  • Streaming Video
  • Presentation by Donna Ferguson

Clean Water Team Videos

• Playlist contains resources related to Safe to Swim water quality monitoring

(Updated 3/23/16)