Clean Water Program

Project Overview

This project identified indicators of watershed condition and stewardship, and management action performance measures that can be used in a wide range of plans and programs for the North Bay Watershed Association (NBWA). This was the first effort at scoring regional watershed health specifically for the North Bay.

Several questions were addressed:
1) What are the problems in this watershed?
2) How severe are these problems?
3) How can progress of meeting regulatory thresholds be tracked?

The Watershed Health Scorecards for Better Management project will develop template scorecards that describe watershed condition and trends over time in terms with emphasis on water and runoff management for the Sonoma Creek and Napa River watersheds. The scorecards, modeled after The Bay Institute’s San Francisco Bay Index, will be short, easy-to-understand, science-based report cards summarizing conditions, stressors, and stewardship involving runoff, water storage, use, and general management of water resources.

The McNabney Marsh has not seen tidal waters in about 100 years and due to the perseverance by and diligence of the Peyton Slough Wetlands Advisory Committee (PSWAC) members, the re-introduction of tidal waters was implemented in August 2008. Benthic infauna are primarily sedentary, invertebrate organisms that burrow in or live on the surface of sediments.