On Thursday, February 9, the EPA is holding a public hearing on a new Clean Water Act discharge permit for the City of Dover’s sewage treatment plant. The hearing involves a decision that will be critical to the health of the Great Bay estuary. We urge all who care about the future health of the estuary to attend. The hearing takes place at 7:00 pm in the McConnell Center located at 61 Locust Street (Room 306).

The proposed permit contains important new wastewater discharge limits needed to control the single greatest threat to the Great Bay estuary: water pollution caused by excess nitrogen. You can learn more about problems associated with nitrogen pollution and eelgrass loss, and the need to reduce pollution from sewage treatment plants, at our Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper website.

CLF strongly supports the draft permit’s important provisions addressing nitrogen pollution, and we commend EPA for taking this essential step toward restoring the estuary’s health. As the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper, I encourage you to attend the Dover public hearing and voice your support for these needed protections.

The Great Bay estuary is a natural treasure that is intractably linked to the local economy and culture of the Seacoast region. Please join me in the effort to save this critical resource. If you are unable to attend the public hearing, please contact me so I can share with you other opportunities to protect the estuary.

Thank you for standing up for the future health and protection of the Great Bay estuary!

For additional information about the Waterkeeper, visit us on our website or Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Rotten eggs and black mayonnaise – sights and smells that, to the dread of many, are becoming increasingly common across Cape Cod. Over the 30 years, increased development and insufficient wastewater treatment systems have degraded the quality of Cape Cod’s waters. CLF, in association with Buzzards Bay Coalition, are working to clean up the Cape – work that was recently covered by David Abel in The Boston Globe.

The eggs and mayonnaise (a description David used to open his piece) are but two signs of a growing body of evidence, both visible and disturbing, of degraded water quality. While visitors and residents depend upon Cape Cod’s pristine waterways – suitable for swimming, conducive to ocean life – instead they find ponds and bays that, in warm months, can be covered in a film of algae, while the water itself turns an opaque copper color.

This degradation is the consequence of too much nitrogen, the result of improperly treated  wastewater, primarily from the Cape’s preponderance of septic tanks. In the Cape’s loose, sandy soils, wastewater moves quickly through the ground, and iscarried into the bays and estuaries before it can be adequately filtered. The region’s economy, ecology, recreation and beauty have all suffered as a consequence – and will suffer more if stakeholders continue to delay action on a clean up plan.

In September, our staff at CLF, together with Buzzards Bay Coalition, filed a federal lawsuit against the US Environmental Protection Agency. Our claim: that the EPA failed to fulfill its responsibilities to oversee a regional water quality plan as required by the Clean Water Act. This lawsuit was CLF’s second showing EPA’s failure to address the Cape’s nitrogen pollution problem. The first, concerning point sources, was filed in August, 2010, and can be found here.

Why is this so important? The regional plan under question has not been updated since 1978, despite predictions at the time about the environmental risks of unchecked nitrogen pollution. Today, the consequences of decades of inaction are clear: badly degraded waterways, with mounting costs for solutions and little time left to ponder them while the region’s ecology and economy hang in the balance..

The answer, CLF argues, is a legally enforceable, coordinated blueprint to clean up the Cape. “It’s our firm belief that a coordinated regional approach is necessary – not individual towns trying to solve the problems on their own,” says Christopher Kilian, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation as quoted in The Boston Globe article.

The approach EPA will ultimately take is the subject of ongoing negotiations between CLF and the Buzzards Bay Coalition, EPA and Barnstable County officials. A report to the Court is due December 6th. Stay tuned.

For more on CLF’s efforts on cleaning up the Cape, read our release on our recent lawsuit, filed with the Buzzards Bay Coalition.

You can also find out more at the website of the Buzzards Bay Coalition.