This article is essentially describing a proposed water quality planning program and report to the state legislature for the area of the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This area was developing rapidly and was affected strongly by planned as well as existing (at the time) water project developments along with agricultural drainage waters. A new program was put into place by the State of California, which was to be finished by 1969; this program’s plan was to control water pollution with basics such as a system for collection, reclamation, treatment and disposal of waste water as well as water discharges. At the time this project was enormous, one of the biggest ever undertaken and was uncommon in a number of aspects; area size, complex hydrological system, diversity of people benefiting from project, and its approaches. The general topic of this research is the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water project to control water quality and control water pollution. There isn’t a specific research question because they article is looking at the proposed plan and report of the project but the general question is will the project be successful?

The study area for the project included the 12 counties surrounding San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (about 130 miles). In order to gather data on this study area the project used computerized mathematical models in order to simulate the “hydrodynamic characteristics” of the water. These included the tidal hydrodynamic model, the dynamic water quality model, and the tidal dispersion model. These models also analyzed the data once they simulated the conditions.

Overall this article was very easy and clear to read. It wasn’t as much of a research article as a summary of what the project would hope to accomplish with water management. The article is also very old, from the 1960s, this means that the project could have failed or been successful already but the article doesn’t say, so more research would be required to see how the project turned out.

Walsh, Raymond. San Francisco Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Program. Journal (Water Pollution Control Federation). [Online] 1968, 40, 241-251. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25036012 (accessed Feb 13,2014).