full-time technical staff responsible for implementation of its 
policies and regulations. The RWQCB's independence combined 
with a requirement that all planning and regulatory decisions be 
made in public following quasi-judicial hearings to assure a 
degree of consistency and predictability and has resulted in a 
high degree of public acceptance of its decisions. 
People living in the San Francisco Bay have a very strong 
environmental awareness and concern about the pollution of 
ground water and San Francisco Bay. In spite of earlier testi¬ 
mony at this seminar, the greatest public concern is with ground 
water contamination problems in the Silicon Valley from leaking 
underground tanks. In this area, there are 120 sites where 
solvents have contaminated ground water and over 3 00 motor fuel 
tanks with leaking gasoline tanks. The RWQCB regulates over 450 
discharges including 43 major municipalities, 19 major indus¬ 
tries, and 16 onsite and offsite discharges are non-hazardous 
waste landfills, smaller municipalities and industries and agri¬ 
cultural operations. In addition to these discharges, there are 
115 dairies and 15 wineries regulated through an exempting 
process. 
POLICY AND MANAGEMENT DECISIONS 
A number of major policy and management decisions have 
influenced water quality control and beneficial uses in the Bay 
area and perhaps the most significant was the political decision 
in the late 1960s to not form a regional agency with the author¬ 
ity to implement Bay-Delta Plan. The next critical decision 
influencing the Bay was the 1972 amendments to the FWCA that 
mandated best available technology for treatment of municipal 
and industrial wastes. These requirements combined with the 
availability of State and Federal construction grants up to 
87 1/2 percent for local agencies resulted in the consolidation 
of 82 municipal treatment plants into 49 large systems with 
upgraded treatment. Over one-third of the total municipal flow 
now receives tertiary treatment achieving a 70 percent reduction 
since 1960 in the wasteloading of conventional pollutants such 
as BOD, SS, and oil and grease in spite of a 100 percent 
increase in flow. The extreme South Bay has experienced the 
most dramatic reduction of over 90 percent of these pollutants. 
The record for major industries is even more impressive with 
volumes of flow reduced by three-fourths and conventional 
pollutants reduced by over 95 percent since 1960. Although 
comparative data is limited, there is evidence that the dis¬ 
charge of toxic pollutants, such as heavy metals and organic 
chemicals, have been significantly reduced from both industries 
and municipalities. Heavy metal loadings estimated at 8 million 
pounds a year in the 1960s have reduced by over 90 percent. 
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