Staff Attorney Ivy Frignoca helps plant vegetation along Long Creek

On July 20, many volunteers including CLF Attorney Ivy Frignoca helped plant vegetation along a tributary of Long Creek which winds through South Portland, Maine, and eventually empties into Casco Bay. The planting was part of the Long Creek Restoration Project, a collaborative 10 year plan to reverse the impacts of years of stormwater pollution to Long Creek. The creek runs through the Maine Mall and surrounding industrial/commercial area where it receives runoff from impervious areas like rooftops, roads and parking lots. This runoff carries heavy metals and other toxins into the creek, and has killed brook trout and other species that once lived there.

In 2008, CLF petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and asked it to issue a permit requiring area businesses to clean up the pollution. EPA issued the permit. Landowners and other stakeholders then banded together to form the Long Creek Restoration Partnership. To learn more about that effort, read this archived article from the Portland Press Herald.

The partnership is 3 years into its 10 year management plan and has put in place plantings, filters, and other items that have already reduced runoff from 30% of the land subject to the permit. Water quality testing is showing promising improvement and more projects are planned for the next several years! This year expect to see plantings in road medians and in 2015, trees added to the Maine Mall Parking lot.

If you look around the Seacoast, you will discover some remarkable volunteers helping to protect the Great Bay estuary. Recognizing that stormwater is a major source of nitrogen pollution, these volunteers are leading the way to cleaner water by simply lending a hand.

Durham is one Great Bay community implementing innovative solutions to reduce stormwater pollution. In collaboration with the UNH Stormwater Center and EPA, the town in 2010 installed a bioretention system (rain gardens) at the Pettee Brook Lane parking lot – the town’s largest municipal lot. The system was designed to optimize the removal of phosphorus and nitrogen.

The Portsmouth Women’s Giving Circle helped do maintenance and install more plants at Durham’s rain gardens. Pictured are (counter clockwise): Meg and Tania Marino, Anne Pinciaro, Bobbie Cyrus, Mai Buker, Town Engineer Dave Cedarholm, Francie Osgood, and Rebecca Hennessy. Photo Courtesy of DPW.

The system was in dire need of maintenance in order to keep functioning properly. To meet the challenge, a large group of Oyster River Middle School students and teachers removed all the debris that had accumulated in the lot’s central rain garden. This work was followed by 7 volunteers from the Seacoast Women’s Giving Circle who spent a rainy Thursday morning cleaning out the smaller rain garden near the entrance of the lot and planting 20 additional plants in both gardens. The efforts of these volunteers will make the gardens more efficient and help to beautify the area – benefitting both local residents and merchants. To learn more about the value of rain gardens and how they function, click here.

Another volunteer, Michael Lambert of Exeter, took a different approach to help limit pollution in Great Bay. He was concerned that people in Exeter might not realize they are connected to people in Milton and Rochester through the same watershed and estuary. With the help of the Great Bay Research Reserve and town officials, he decided to install a map of the estuary near Swasey Parkway along the Squamscott River.

Michael’s efforts were recently unveiled during a public presentation. Mounted on stone, the map will help future generations understand that all the estuary’s communities are connected and must work together to protect this extraordinary natural resource.

A special thanks to these outstanding individuals for caring so deeply about the future of the Great Bay estuary and for making a difference. You can also learn more about the work of other individuals, like Bill Stewart of New Castle.

Furthermore, if you would like to join in and volunteer to help save Great Bay for future generations there are many opportunities to get involved. Email me at pwellenberger@clf.org or visit the Research Reserve’s Great Bay Discovery Center to learn more.

Ultimately, everyone can make a difference by being responsible for their communities.

For more information about the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper and my work to protect the Great Bay estuary, visit: http://www.clf.org/great-bay-waterkeeper/. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Great Bay map along the Squamscott River in downtown Exeter

Residents of Newmarket, New Hampshire went to the polls on Tuesday and sent a powerful message: that clean water is essential, and that we need to make needed investments to support it.

Up for vote yesterday was a warrant article to fund the $14 million construction of a major upgrade to the town’s sewage treatment plant. The result? More than 80 percent of voters approved the measure, making Newmarket a leading community in the efforts to improve the health of the Great Bay estuary.

Last December, Newmarket’s City Council voted unanimously to become the first New Hampshire Seacoast community to accept stringent reductions in nitrogen pollution from a sewage treatment plant. It has long been recognized that nitrogen from sewage treatment plants is a major, controllable source of the pollution that’s causing the decline of the Great Bay estuary.

Now, thanks to the wisdom of its voters, Newmarket can begin the upgrade of its existing sewage treatment plant – a facility in desperate need of an overhaul. First built in 1965 and last updated in 1985, it has become increasingly difficult – and costly – to maintain the facility. Under the terms of Newmarket’s agreement with EPA, the town now has five years to complete the project. Additional improvements may be required in later years. The town must also develop a comprehensive plan to reduce the impacts from polluted stormwater.

In accepting their final permit and working with EPA – rather than taking the path of endless, costly litigation currently being pursued by Portsmouth, Dover and Rochester – Newmarket town officials chose to be an important part of the solution for the Great Bay estuary. Now, Newmarket voters have taken the next critical step, confirming the town’s willingness to lead in solving our water pollution problems.

Newmarket’s positive vote sends a powerful signal that the people of the Seacoast care about protecting the health of our waters. Municipal officials in Portsmouth, Dover and Rochester need to hear this message, and need to end their ongoing tactics designed to delay needed protections for our estuary – delays that the Great Bay estuary simply can’t afford.

Newmarket voters are to be thanked and congratulated for taking this important, much needed step toward protecting the Lamprey River, Great Bay, and the estuary as a whole, now and for future generations.

For more information about the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper and my work to protect the Great Bay estuary, visit: http://www.clf.org/great-bay-waterkeeper/. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Stormwater continues to be a major source of pollution to the Great Bay estuary. When it rains, runoff carries a wide range of pollutants – from dog waste and lawn fertilizers, to gasoline and oil, to heavy metals, nutrients and sediments – that flow into our waters with little or no treatment.

To combat this pollution, the UNH Stormwater Center and other local groups are working with Seacoast communities to implement projects at a neighborhood level to reduce the flow of untreated stormwater reaching the estuary. While many of these projects are small in scope, they demonstrate the value of dealing with stormwater close to home. One of the most interesting approaches is based on a program that was developed in Maine.

In 2009, the Kennebunkport Conservation Commission, in partnership with the University of New England, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and others, developed the Lawns for Lobsters program. The program’s goal is to educate homeowners on steps they can take to ensure a healthy lawn with minimal impact on the environment. The program was also recently renamed Lawns to Lobsters, giving greater emphasis on the flow of water from our lawns to the ocean.

Other communities are now adopting the program, including one in New Hampshire. New Castle, the only town in the state composed entirely of islands, covers approximately 500 acres and sits at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. With a residential population of slightly more than 1,000, the town’s Conservation Commission is committed to reducing the impacts from non-point sources of pollution and launched the Lawns to Lobsters program last summer.

Residents who want to participate in the program take a pledge to use sound stewardship principles in managing their own property. This includes testing the soil before using a fertilizer, applying the correct amount, and not applying fertilizer if rain is predicted in the next 48 hours. Other measures include keeping the grass at least three inches in length (tall grass needs less water), planting clover as a fertilizer substitute, properly disposing of dog waste, and using herbicides and insecticides sparingly. Homeowners also are asked to consider replacing all or part of their lawn with native plants.

Long term, the town wants to encourage citizens to install rain gardens and vegetative buffers as a way to prevent polluted runoff. In a compact community such as New Castle, all of these steps can add up and help to protect our waterways. You can read more about the New Castle Conservation Commission’s efforts to protect the Great Bay estuary here.

In partnership with the Great Bay Stewards and the NH Department of Environmental Services, we plan to launch a similar program for homeowners next spring. The program will be based on the Department’s Homeowner’s Guide to Stormwater Management. Stay tuned for more information!  In the meantime, there are lots of resources available to homeowners on how to install a rain garden. The University of NH Cooperative Extension Services offer an excellent guide called Landscaping at the Water’s Edge.

As Waterkeeper, I find it encouraging that New Castle is addressing the serious issue of stormwater pollution. We all need to work together to solve the problem. By becoming responsible homeowners, New Castle residents are taking an important first step.

For more information about the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper and my work to protect the Great Bay estuary, visit: http://www.clf.org/great-bay-waterkeeper/. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Until the last week or so, it’s been a dry spring here in Maine and so most of us have welcomed the recent spate of rain. But as I rode past the Back Cove and the East End Wastewater treatment plant in Portland this morning, it was hard not to think about the downside of all this rain–the runoff from streets, rooftops and other hard surfaces that overwhelms our sewer system and treatment facilities and washes untreated right into Back Cove and Casco Bay, carrying pollutants like oil, metals, waste and other accumulated debris along with it. It’s no surprise that these concerns might occur to me, given CLF’s long-standing involvement in tackling this issue, but it doesn’t take an advocate to see the need for action. For Chris Aceto, CLF’s landlord here at 47 Portland Street in Portland’s Bayside neighborhood, a recent article by Seth Koenig of the Bangor Daily News brought back some not so great memories of a dirtier Casco Bay and was a reminder that we still have a lot of work to do:

“I am 46. My mother used to take me to the East End Beach when I was 6 which would have been 1972. I can remember it so clearly because although I was 6, I thought, “This is not a beach!!” You could SEE the raw sewage like some kind of movie footage!  I think she wanted me to see the “beach” she went to when she was a little girl. My brother was the first lifeguard hired when that beach was opened up for swimming. It may have been 1979 or so. My cousins used to have a place at Peaks Island and NO ONE wanted to go there because the Ferry used to pull in to the docks on Commercial Street and you could not “see” water – it was brown, gross, stinky filth floating on top of the water.

Once the city showed some initiative to clean the water and build its first treatment plant, economically, Portland started to turn around. I am sure I am preaching here to the choir, but that article just brought back a ton of memories.” — Chris Aceto

Thanks to Chris for recounting that story that reminds us all about how important our continued vigilance is on finding short-term and long-term solutions to the problem of polluted runoff fouling our waterways, not just here in Portland, but around Maine and the country.

The City of Portland has made good progress in the past few years, but there remains a good deal of work to do.  CLF will continue to push for a solution that will allow us to stop sending untreated pollution and sewage to Casco Bay.

Me on a recent beautiful day on the Great Bay estuary.

I’m thrilled to be launching an important and much needed effort to restore and protect the health of our treasured Great Bay estuary: CLF’s new Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper program.

As the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper, I’ll be devoting all my time and effort to protecting this remarkable water resource – a resource that is threatened by pollution and deserves all the attention it can get. It’s a place I’ve come to know well through 20 years of managing the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, and by living in nearby Newmarket. The threats to the Bay have never been clearer, the opportunity to fix them never greater.

The objective of the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper program is to work for and protect the health of the waters making up the Great Bay estuary – our major bays (Great Bay and Little Bay), our tidal rivers (the Piscataqua, Salmon Falls, Cocheco, Bellamy, Oyster, Lamprey, Squamscott and Winnicut Rivers), and our wonderful harbors and creeks (Portsmouth and Little Harbor; Spinney, Spruce and Sagamore Creeks). Each of these water bodies, on their own, is an important natural resource. Together, they comprise a remarkable and rich ecosystem that is under threat..

Population growth, sprawl, and outdated water infrastructure are all contributing to the decline of the Great Bay estuary. Pollution levels have increased, leading to the loss of critical habitat within the estuary. Reversing these trends will require a multi-pronged approach including: the need to invest in improved  infrastructure, such as sewage treatment plants; innovative approaches to reducing existing stormwater pollution; and better planning to prevent future sprawl development and the water pollution it causes.

My work as the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper will include:

• advocating for needed policies and compliance with environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act,
• working with scientists and the many stakeholders involved in efforts related to the Great Bay estuary, and
• keeping a watchful eye on waters within the estuary.

Most importantly, I look forward to building a much stronger public voice for the estuary. Just as there are many people and organizations that care about the health and future of the Great Bay estuary, there are many more people who will care, and lend their voices to protecting this amazing water resource, once they learn more about the threats it’s facing. It’s my goal to grow the chorus of concerned citizens about our Great Bay.

I first learned about Great Bay 40 years ago as an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire. I quickly fell in love with its beauty and richness and worked with others to reject the proposal by Aristotle Onassis to build the world’s largest oil refinery on the shores of Great Bay. These efforts led to the creation of the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve – a Reserve I had the privilege to manage for more than 20 years, from its inception in 1990 to 2011.They were rich, wonderful years that provided me the opportunity to work with a wide diversity of dedicated individuals committed to saving this very special place.

Having worked on Great Bay matters for more than two decades, I am deeply concerned about the declining health of the estuary. Just as its threats are many, so too are multiple solutions are needed. We’re all in this together; only through greater public action can we protect the valuable ecological, recreational and cultural benefits of this remarkable resource. It’s a major challenge, but it’s one I welcome working on with you.

Please contact me with questions or concerns about the Great Bay estuary (603.498.3545, or pwellenberger@clf.org), and stay informed about my work by visiting www.clf.org/great-bay-waterkeeper.

Image courtesy of eutrophication&hypoxia @ flickr. Creative Commons

Massachusetts lacks money and needs clean water. This bind – one in which the state found itself following a June report – has forced a discussion policies that are raising the hackles of Massachusetts residents.

According to a report by the Massachusetts Water Infrastructure Finance Commission released in June, Massachusetts has a statewide “funding gap” of $21 billion to pay for its drinking water and wastewater systems over the next twenty years.  The report found that cities and towns across the state are dealing with aging water and sewer systems – some from the 1800s. The cost of mere maintenance is substantial – let alone expansions of infrastructure to keep up with residential and commercial growth.

The Commission considered a variety of strategies to raise revenue, including new taxes on fertilizers or pesticides, a new bottle bill, and a statewide water surcharge. A surcharge would likely be 1 mil per gallon, or about $23 per year for the average individual. Naturally, the surcharge proposal has run into the loudest opposition.

In response, petitions are circulating for a 2012 ballot initiative which would cap water and sewer rate increases at 2.5% per year. Before rejecting rate increases, Massachusetts citizens should consider the true costs and benefits of water management systems.

Most municipal water systems combine stormwater and sewage, meaning that storms are causing sewer overflows because older systems aren’t equipped to handle large volumes. Nutrient pollution from inadequate sewage treatment creates toxic algae blooms, shuts down beaches, and disrupts ecosystems and tourism. The solutions to these problems may not be cheap, but they’re desperately needed. Until we manage wastewater and stormwater effectively, we aren’t paying the true costs of the infrastructure that delivers clean water to our homes and businesses.

Recognizing this need for massive investment in our nation’s infrastructure, the Obama administration proposed a “national infrastructure bank” over the past few months. The proposal would help local governments finance infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, and sewer systems. The bill passed the U.S. Senate with bipartisan support, but does not appear to have the same level of support in the House of Representatives. So states like Massachusetts may need to act on their own to ensure that municipalities have the resources they need to protect the public from sewer overflows and antiquated wastewater treatment systems.

Unless we want to face an uncertain future, our cities need the capability to repair, maintain, and enlarge their water and sewer systems when necessary. They also need capital to invest in green infrastructure projects like permeable pavement, rain gardens, and green roofs, which absorb and filter rainwater and decrease the amount of water pouring into sewer systems.  Green infrastructure projects ultimately save cities money in the long run by reducing sewer inputs and thereby reducing the need for old-fashioned (“grey”) infrastructure like underground tanks and tunnels. Meanwhile, communities enjoy the benefits of new green space, carbon-mitigating wetlands, and Cities like Philadelphia and New York are already investing extensively in green stormwater management techniques, and anticipating millions in savings.  (The Philadelphia Water Department has estimated that its new stormwater policies have diverted a quarter billion gallons of water from the sewer system, saving the city $170 million.)

Let’s stay tuned for the Commission’s final recommendations for Massachusetts, and consider all the options for financing our infrastructure needs in an equitable and manageable way.

Yesterday, National Public Radio reported on a severe toxic algae bloom that is plaguing a popular lake in Oklahoma.

The algae in Oklahoma was spurred by familiar factors – lower water levels in the lake due to higher  water consumption by people, hotter conditions and low rainfall attributable to climate change, and nutrient pollution swept into the lake by stormwater runoff from the surrounding land area.

What was new was to hear public officials acknowledge that the lack of clean water is hurting the local economy and impacting people’s health.

As NPR Reported:

“ Across the state, the lack of water has even cut into tourism. Low water levels in northeast Oklahoma’s Grand Lake resulted in a spike of toxic levels of blue-green algae.

Gov. Mary Fallin says this hit just as visitors were arriving for July 4 celebrations.

It took a toll on businesses and tourism at the lake itself,” Fallin says. ‘Some of the businesses I talked to at Grand Lake told me they saw a 50 percent drop in the number of people who were coming into their businesses.’”

As the CLF Scoop reported earlier this summer, U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe got sick after swimming amid the toxic blue-green algae in Grand Lake, and pinned his own illness on the algae.  Inhofe is known as one of the staunchest anti-environmentalists in Congress, and has opposed regulation to address climate change.  The Senator himself reportedly admitted the irony, suggesting that “the environment was fighting back.”

CLF hasn’t been sitting on the sidelines like some.  We’re fighting back against the sources of toxic algae blooms in New England – polluted stormwater runoff, inadequate management of sewage, and carbon dioxide emissions that accelerate climate change.  Reversing the devastating toxic algae blooms that regularly shut down bays along Cape Cod, Lake Champlain, New Hampshire’s Great Bay, Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, and elsewhere throughout the region is a top priority for CLF.

Unfortunately, it has taken a crisis to convince some elected officials what CLF has known for years.  Clean water generates economic growth, health, and tourism, while creating outdoor spaces that nurture our spirit.

Former MWRA Executive Director Paul Levy (who has worn a lot of really interesting hats in his career) provides, in CommonWealth Magazine, this really interesting take on the Boston Harbor cleanup and lessons learned from that experience can inform decisions about the slow motion implosion of the transit system of Greater Boston.  Very important reading that nicely complements the good words and insights of Peter Shelley on this blog about the Harbor cleanup.

Big questions that hang in the area include:

• Noting that the cleanup has massively improved the harbor – if we did it all over again, would we employ a “big pipe and big plant” solution to the sewage and stormwater problem in Boston or use more local and distributed methods?
• What lessons learned from these case studies can be applied to the electricity system?
• What role does the existence of the massive highway system that spans the nation (and if you want to read a fascinating description of the creation of that system check out “The Big Roads” by Earl Swift) have on our other infrastructure planning and decision making?

Any thoughts on these questions?  The comments section below awaits.