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A Word on Best
Management
Practices (BMPs)
Water quality
monitoring is a critical component of the TMDL picture but it must be
intimately associated with an organized
approach to best management practices (BMPs).
While this document
focuses far more on water quality monitoring than BMPs, there is ample
mention of BMPs throughout the paper, along with a case study on the
topic. Without BMPs, many of the nonpoint
sources of pollution would remain unimpacted. However, approaches to BMP
implementation need to be carefully evaluated and implemented to get the
biggest bang for the buck.
Conservation districts,
state and federal resource agencies, and certified consultants will
continue to play a crucial role in helping public and private land
managers to continue to develop BMPs.
In addition, many
of these local agencies are becoming increasingly involved in providing
water quality monitoring support as well. On the urban side, municipal
wastewater and drinking water management
agencies and urban developers will increasingly be involved in
establishing and implementing BMPs for
urban sources of nonpoint source pollution.
This paper will
provide a very basic introduction to key TMDL concepts, critical
sampling elements, implications for
citizens, importance of developing stakeholder involvement, modeling,
field monitoring and data analysis approaches. It also covers
fundamental questions users ask, basic information describing the water
quality parameters of concern, sources of contamination, how water
quality parameters are measured and quantified, and examples of how some
leaders in watersheds across the country are addressing issues ranging
from technical challenges to stake-holder buy-in.
YSI Incorporated hopes
this document will offer a starting point upon which holistic approaches
can be built to define, understand, and solve problems related to water
quality and watershed health. A list of references – both in the
library and on the World Wide Web – is included at the end of the
paper for readers who wish to research TMDLs further.
The term TMDL will
be used in several ways throughout this document. In some instances it
will refer to the establishment of the actual TMDL
number, the amount of a pollutant allowed in a
water body under an agreed-upon plan. In other cases, it will be
referring to the TMDL approach, which in essence is the watershed
approach. We hope the context will make it obvious as to how the term is
being used.
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