FROM: Robert Thompson, General Manager
Originator: Lan C. Wiborg, Director of Environmental Services
SUBJECT:
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OCEAN ACIDIFICATION AND HYPOXIA MINI-MOORING
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GENERAL MANAGER'S RECOMMENDATION
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RECOMMENDATION: Recommend to the Board of Directors to:
A. Approve a Sole Source Service Contract with The Regents of the University of California on behalf of its San Diego campus' Scripps Institution of Oceanography to build and maintain an ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH) mini-mooring and to provide field and data support, in an amount not to exceed $290,000 for the period July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026;
B. Approve three (3) optional one-year renewals to maintain and calibrate the mini-mooring sensors as well as provide field and data support, in an amount not to exceed $130,000 for each renewal; and
C. Approve a 10% contingency per year.
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BACKGROUND
Since 2015, Orange County Sanitation District (OC San), along with the City of Los Angeles, LA County Sanitation Districts and the City of San Diego, have been conducting ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH) monitoring. OC San and the City of San Diego each use oceanographic moorings, which are seafloor-anchored buoys that suspend multiple OAH sensors throughout the water column. The goal of the mooring deployments is to gain a better understanding of the variability and decreasing trends in pH (acidification) and dissolved oxygen (hypoxia) across the Southern California Bight.
In 2021, OC San's OAH mooring program became a specific requirement under the 2021 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Permit (NPDES) ocean discharge permit.
In 2022, with OC San Board approval, staff at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Ocean Time Series Lab at UC San Diego designed and built a pilot mini-mooring for OC San to address challenges associated with the previous OAH mooring's large size and long lead times with repairs and replacement of mooring senso...
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