Groundwater Protection in San Francisco Bay Area

Abstract

In the San Francisco Bay Region, the Regional Water Quality Control Board is now regulating approximately 140 sites where toxic chemicals have contaminated groundwater. Many of these were located through the Board's Underground Tank Leak Detection Program, which required subsurface investigations at sites with underground solvent tanks. New ordinances and state laws are expected to result in the discovery of hundreds more contamination sites in the next few years. The Regional Board is developing a ranking methodology to assign priorities among cases and a set of guidelines for establishment of clean‐up objectives on a site‐by‐site basis. Appropriate regulatory mechanisms have been selected to enforce the necessary investigation and cleanup activities.