City of Santa Barbara, Creeks Division. 2012. Tools for Tracking Human Fecal Pollution in Urban Storm Drains, Creeks, and Beaches. City of Santa Barbara, Creeks Division, Santa Barbara, CA. Pages 1-16

bacteria, coastal, TMDL, water quality

The motivation for this guide came as a result of the City of Santa Barbara’s efforts to tackle the problem of frequent beach warnings for fecal indicator bacteria at Arroyo Burro Beach and East Beach at Mission Creek. The purpose of this guide is to present a brief overview of tools and provide examples where they have been used successfully to track ”nonpoint source” human fecal pollution to its source. Some examples of the tools discussed in this article are the following: Human-specific waste markers, microbial community fingerprinting, flow gauges and autosamplers, et cetera.