California Bays and Estuaries Policy

The policy also applies to smaller areas of ocean water within headlands or harbor works when the distance between those features is less than 75 percent of the greatest dimension of the enclosed portion.

[4] Harbors were important foci of early European American settlement of California; and cities have developed adjacent to the larger ones.

[8] The California Bays and Estuaries Policy served as part of the water quality standards in effect for the CWA.

The policy called for the entirety of closed bays and estuaries in California to extract toxic substances present in the waters, while coming up with unproblematic methods of discharging these wastes.

It allowed specific exceptions to the original prohibition of wastewater discharges to the San Francisco Bay, south of Dumbarton Bridge under the premise that a series of qualifying findings were met.

Although only a portion of Humboldt Bay is visible in this aerial image, the small opening to the Pacific Ocean illustrates the limited mixing opportunities for dilution of wastes entering the bay in runoff.