Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project Characteristics Santa Monica Bay's 414-square mile watershed includes a large part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and is home to approximately three million people. The bay is vital to the economic health of Los Angeles.
Tourism ranks as the second largest industry in the region.
The 22 public beaches along the bay's 50 miles of shoreline attract over 45 million visitors each year and some are world renowned for providing spectacular surfing opportunities. The Problem Despite notable environmental improvements, the bay continues to face the challenges of health risks to recreational users and habitat degradation resulting from urban runoff pollution during both dry and wet weather. Los Angeles County and the 21 cities in the watershed are grappling with implementing stormwater pollution reduction technologies, given limited financial resources and the lack of research on appropriate technologies for the climate and weather regime found in Southern California. The purpose of this project was to demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of catchbasin retrofit devices in reducing pollutant loads to the bay. Commercially available and easily constructed devices were evaluated in both wet and dry weather.