Tiered Monitoring Design
Tier I
The purpose of Tier I monitoring is to assist the Florida Department of
Environmental Protection, other agencies, and the public in providing
estimates of the statewide condition, described by indicators or water quality
criteria, of Florida waters. The information generated is the basis for
reporting and advising relevant Departmental and other governmental agencies
on the status and trends of Florida’s water quality. Florida has embraced a
random sample (probabilistic) based status monitoring
network and a fixed station “trend” or temporal
variability (TV) monitoring program. The status monitoring network is tied
to the rotating basin schedule that was set up by the TMDL program (Tier II).
Data generated by the Status Network and the Temporal Variability Network can
be utilized for Tier II decision making.
The main purposes of Tier II monitoring is to identify problem water
bodies, to determine the extent and severity of the problems within
these water bodies, and to develop pollution reduction goals to address
these problems. This monitoring is used to set the Total Maximum Daily
Loads (TMDLs) of the pollutants identified as causing the problems
within these waterbodies (For additional information, please also see
the Total Maximum Daily Load Program).
Regulatory permits are issued at the end of each Tier II monitoring
cycle. This allows information from Tier II to feed into Tier III (site
specific) monitoring as listed below.
The main purpose of Tier III monitoring is to address site-specific
water quality monitoring questions. It includes all monitoring tied to
regulatory permits issued by DEP and is associated with evaluating the
effectiveness of regulating point source discharges, BMPs or TMDLs (For
additional information, please see the
Wastewater Program, the
NPDES Stormwater Program, the
Environmental Resource Permitting Program,
Mine Reclamation, and
Underground Injection Control).
