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Frank Carini: On the path to a great beech

Rhode Island arborist Matt Largess recently led a tour of Wingover Farm’s forest. He was impressed with what he saw.— Frank Carini/ecoRI News photos

Rhode Island arborist Matt Largess recently led a tour of Wingover Farm’s forest. He was impressed with what he saw.

— Frank Carini/ecoRI News photos

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

To see the video and more photos with this article, please hit this link.

TIVERTON, R.I.

The “oohs and aahs” and “oh my gods” were followed immediately by one or more superlatives from among “amazing,” “cool,” “awesome,” “incredible” and “wow.”

“If you could leave this for 100 years people would come from around the world to see it because everything else is going be gone. Just think of it that way,” Matt Largess, a respected Rhode Island arborist who has studied East Coast forests from Maine to the Florida Keys, said near the end of an hourlong walk in the woods on a 72-acre farm not far from the coast. “If Rhode Island could start to think that way, if they saved their places where people come as ecotourists to see the forest. I know its sounds farfetched but in 100 years it’s going to be that crucial, not only to see our leaf colors but just come to be in a forest near our ocean. Rhode Island is one of the great environments. We have these beautiful forests right up to the ocean, but they’re diminishing rapidly.”

During an Oct. 18 tour of Wingover Farm’s “unique” forestland, the leaves of Rhode Island’s state tree, the red maple, were turning color and Largess and two colleagues, Daryl Ward and Kara Discenza, were constantly pointing out trees of all shapes, sizes, and ages.

During the 60-minute tour, they counted nearly two dozen different types of trees, including American beech, American holly, black and white oaks, yellow and white pines, black tupelo, yellow and paper birches, sassafras, black cherry, and bigtooth aspen.

And not just individual trees, but stands of black birch, groups of teenage and adult red maple growing together, and baby holly trees sprouting from the forest floor. Largess said having birch, holly, and beech together in one place was special. He used the word “special” a lot. He said the forest has an “impressive understory.” He noted that some of the tallest hollies documented in North America are in Tiverton and Little Compton. He said native forests of American beech are shrinking rapidly, especially in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

With the population of the region’s American beech decreasing, Largess was thrilled to discover a large beech tree he repeatedly called “the mother tree.” He said the tree must be 300-400 years old and was surrounded by younger beeches, 150 or so years old, waiting to be the next mother. He pointed out beechdrops, a wildflower that lacks chlorophyll and produces brown stems on which small white and purple flowers appear July through October, growing under the forest’s majestic beech tree.

The property’s other vegetation included, among many others, mountain laurel, a broadleaf evergreen shrub; sweet pepperbush, a shrub with fragrant white or pink terminal flower spikes in late summer; and winterberry holly, a shrub with copious amounts of bright-red berries that shine in the fall and winter landscape.

Largess called the layered and biodiverse property, which includes a pond alive with frogs and fish, “a balanced ecosystem.” He said it would be an excellent location for the Rhode Island Natural History Survey to hold a BioBlitz, would make a wonderful outdoor classroom for local students, and could be a great future ecotourism site, as it could be tied into nearby Weetamoo Woods.

Julie Munafo invited the Largess Forestry professionals on the tour to better understand what could be lost should the property be developed into an 11-megawatt solar facility.

Munafo’s family has owned the Crandall Road property since the 1970s, but a pending sale could lead to some 40 acres of solar panels. The buyer’s proposed project would inevitably decimate forestland, ruin farmland, and destroy wildlife habitat.

The family is torn by the pending sale of the property — Munafo, for one, doesn’t want to see the farm reduced to acres of solar panels. But the family was unable to come to an agreement with the local land trust or find a buyer interested in farming and/or preservation, according to Munafo. She said she believes the property is selling for about a million dollars.

Largess, who has become a leading spokesmen for the preservation of trees and old-growth forests, said the farm’s open space is unique, as it features, in this order, open fields, young woodlands, and a mature forest. He was impressed with the property’s mix of vegetation, most notably its diverse collection of tree species. He noted that forestland like this “needs to be protected,” not turned into an energy facility, subdivision, or an office park.

In fact, the staunch conservationist believes that trees deserve more respect, which is why his company is “dedicated to the preservation, restoration, and education of the the Earth’s forests while enhancing awareness and knowledge of the natural world.”

“Trees are the No. 1 tool to battle climate change,” Largess said. “But my work as an arborist is less about planting trees and more about cutting them down, because cars are getting dirty or someone wants to see the water.”

 

 

Like many following the ongoing debates across Rhode Island on where to site solar projects, Largess doesn’t understand why so many are gung-ho to clear-cut forests. Like others who have weighed in on the controversial topic, he believes Rhode Island can deal with the issues of interconnection, infrastructure, incentives, property rights, and economics without sacrificing priceless open space. (A city in eastern China is building the world’s first photovoltaic highway.)

The will, both public and political, however, needs to be there. The state, its 39 municipalities, its 1.06 million people, and a host of nonprofit organizations have been grappling with the issue for two years. The town of Tiverton, for instance, is pondering a solar moratorium until it can craft an ordinance that better addresses the siting of utility-scale solar energy.

Munafo, who, like Largess, supports renewable energy, at least those projects sited responsibly, has been a vocal proponent of the moratorium. She believes the project proposed for her family’s property doesn’t mesh with the town’s comprehensive plan or even Tiverton’s current solar ordinance. In a letter to the editor recently published in the Sakonnet Times, the Jamestown resident asks: “How is wiping out a historic farmhouse, prime farmland and a special forest for a massive solar plant consistent with the comprehensive plan?”

Site work in the woods of Wingover Farm, likely done to determine the property’s ability to host an industrial-scale solar project, has already claimed a number of trees, including a small stand of American holly.

Once the trees are cut down and the solar panels installed, Largess said the development will clear a path for Russian olive, oriental bittersweet, and other invasive species to take root.

“All these trees will be gone and the whole ecosystem will change,” Largess said. “This place is special. It’s hard to find green spaces like this anymore. This property is a classic example of the problems we are having.”

Frank Carini is editor of ecori.org

 

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Frank Carini: How to start blocking catastrophe

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From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

History will not be kind to many of us, most notably Baby Boomers, Millennials, the Joneses and Gen Xers. We’ll be remembered for savaging the planet even though we knew better. We’ll be synonymous with selfishness. Our hubris will be infamous.

The latest projections from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aren’t pretty: widespread drought, food shortages, and a mass die-off of coral reefs, perhaps as soon as 2040. Our collective modus operandi will be to ignore the report’s facts, discredit its science, and blame more frequent and intense storms and raging wildfires on everything but the burning of fossil fuels, our unrelenting procreation, and human arrogance, from flatulent bovines to the pesky sun.

We’ve been ignoring climate change for generations. Even though our 140-character attention span was recently increased to 280, the issue is too big for our selfie society to take the time to understand. Plus, if we did, we’d actually have to change our behaviors and reduce our consumption.

The future other generations — and many of us — are facing will be even crueler to the desperate and will be more devoid of biodiversity. More people will suffer and more species will be lost. And you know what, the sad truth is we don’t give a damn — at least not enough of us, at least not yet.

The daily news cycle largely ignores the topic of climate change, because it doesn’t change much from day to day. It can’t be measured in polls, there aren’t many sexy soundbites, and it doesn’t get good ratings. Plus, much of the media can’t be bothered to focus on a slow-motion crisis that impacts everyone and everything on the planet.

The IPCC’s recent report, which was released Oct. 8, warns that world governments have only a dozen years to take meaningful action. The reaction so far to the latest climate warning? You can hear what’s left of the world’s crickets chirping.

With recent climate-change projections being more dire than previously thought, heading off disaster and suffering will require a massive effort from governments around the world. Unfortunately, generations’ worth of evidence shows there’s little reason to believe that humanity is up for the challenge.

The kind of political will and movement away from partisan pandering required to make the necessary changes could be driven by a nagging public, but that sort of pressure depends on the collective public diverting its attention away from the latest iPhone, the escapades of real housewives, the D.C. follies, and the fortunes of sports teams. The odds are against that, which is exactly what the profiteers want. We’re easily distracted when the status quo yells “squirrel.”

For instance, the recent U.N. report, which stresses the need to protect and restore forests, was released two weeks after more than 200 organizations, elected officials, and scientists unveiled their Stand4Forests campaign. The nationwide effort demands the protection of forests as a vital climate solution and warns against false technology solutions such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. The campaign’s message has largely been ignored.

“Climate science shows that we cannot stop a climate catastrophe without scaling up the protection of forests around the world,” according to Stand4Forests supporters.

In Rhode Island, the ongoing debate surrounding the protection of forestland provides a microcosm of the world’s larger problem. During the past several years, Rhode Island has clear-cut forest, both young and oldish, to build a casino and an office park, and to accommodate other revolutionary ideas, such as a fossil-fuel power plant. There’s a current rush intensifying to chop down forests to build solar arrays, to help power our growing collection of mobile devices and televisions. To defend this shortsighted practice, some profiteers have argued that this sacrifice is necessary to protect the environment. They ignore the land we have already ruined for use as potential solar fields.

Just because renewable energy is much cleaner than fossil fuels doesn’t mean that such projects have the right to be sited irresponsibly.

The current recorded amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is nearly 406 parts per million (ppm) — well beyond the 350 ppm that climate scientists have deemed safe for humans, never mind most of the planet’s other living inhabitants.

Nevertheless, the U.S. forest industry, for one, is rapidly replacing much of the nation’s mature forests with younger forests and commercial tree plantations. Degraded and fragmented woodlands are far less effective at storing carbon than old-growth forests, they are more vulnerable to wildfires, and they aren’t nearly as helpful when it comes to flood prevention.

Forests, especially mature ones, also provide clean air and fresh water, are home to thousands of species of plants and animals, and are a vital necessity when it comes to addressing climate change — should we ever really decide to.

Part of a true action plan, according to the Stand4Forests campaign, should include:

Ending subsidies for false solutions such as industrial-scale bioenergy and genetically engineered trees.

Investing in forest protection as a resiliency and adaptation strategy for communities vulnerable to the impacts of pollution and climate change.

Developing just economic transition strategies for communities dependent on an extractive forest economy and provide more options for landowners and municipalities to keep forests standing and thriving.

Rhode Island could also start doing its part, beyond signing toothless executive orders, ignoring policy recommendations, and supporting schemes such as voluntary compliance.

The time is now for Rhode Island and the rest of the world to reflect on our behaviors, actions, and attitudes that are bankrupting the future. The only real answer to mitigating our life-changing impacts is sacrifice. It starts with you.

Frank Carini is the ecoRI News editor.

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Frank Carini: Nitrogen from houses threatens coastal salt ponds

Mashchaug Pond, in Westerly, one of southern Rhode Island's salt ponds, also called lagoons.

Mashchaug Pond, in Westerly, one of southern Rhode Island's salt ponds, also called lagoons.

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

CHARLESTOWN, R.I. — People flock to live on and visit the coast here, but in the town’s most densely developed area, excess nitrogen from all those coastal dwellings is threatening the health of three salt ponds that connect to Block Island Sound and are the foundation of the local tourism industry.

This salt-ponds watershed makes up 33 percent of the town but contains 63 percent of all Charlestown dwellings. Dense development around the Ocean State’s coastal salt ponds isn’t limited to Charlestown.

The salt-pond region of southern Rhode Island extends from Maschaug Pond in Westerly to Point Judith Pond in Narragansett and forms the natural boundary between the Atlantic Ocean and a shallow freshwater aquifer. This watershed is so built up that vital ecosystems are under enormous pressure.

“A burgeoning population and increasing competition among activities threatens to overwhelm the capacity of the salt ponds to absorb wastes, provide shelter for boats and vessels, attract residents and tourists and underpin premium real estate values,” according to the Coastal Resources Management Council’s Salt Ponds Region Special Area Management Plan. “Large areas of the salt ponds are poorly flushed, which makes them valuable as fish and shellfish nurseries, but, also particularly susceptible to eutrophication and bacterial contamination.”

Studies and surveys by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by state agencies across the country have found that nonpoint source pollution, such as excess fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides, oil, grease, and toxic chemicals from runoff, and bacteria and nutrients from faulty septic systems, causes the most harm to rivers, streams, lakes, estuaries, coastal waters, and wetlands.

In Rhode Island’s salt-pond region, cesspools and failing and substandard septic systems are the largest source of bacterial and nutrient contamination. In Charlestown, work done by the University of Rhode Island's Cooperative Extension and Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials has found that 80 percent of groundwater nitrate is from onsite wastewater treatment systems.

In the town’s coastal-pond watershed sampling of private wells has found nitrogen concentrations that approach or exceed the EPA established maximum contaminant level of 10 milligrams per liter. The EPA action level is 5 mg/L. Charlestown relies exclusively on groundwater for drinking.

Besides contaminating drinking-water wells, this nitrogen-enriched groundwater also eventually flows into Charlestown’s three coastal salt ponds, where it causes eutrophication and increases the risk of hypoxia.

Since 1994, Green Hill Pond and eastern Ninigret Pond have been closed to shellfishing because of “significantly deteriorated water quality.”

The total average annual influx of nitrogen to Charlestown’s three coastal ponds is nearly 1.2 million pounds, according to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM). Here is the breakdown: Green Hill Pond, 46,903 pounds; Ninigret Pond, 44,794; Quonochontaug Pond, 24,579.

Matt Dowling, hired in 2008 as Charlestown’s first full-time onsite wastewater manager — only a handful of Rhode Island municipalities have a such a position — recently told ecoRI News that reducing nitrogen loading is a major priority from both a public-health and environmental-protection perspective.

Charlestown began addressing the problem in earnest four years before Dowling, an environmental scientist, was hired. 

In the town’s coastal-pond watershed sampling of private wells has found nitrogen concentrations that approach or exceed EPA established maximum contaminant levels.

Filling in holes

In 2004, three years before a Rhode Island enacted a law to address a statewide problem, Charlestown officials took a bold step by requiring the elimination of all cesspools, which are merely holes in the ground that do nothing to treat human waste. These 55-gallon or so concrete- or stone-lined pits with holes in which sewage is flushed offer no treatment for pathogens, harmful bacteria, and nutrients, most notably nitrogen.

Cesspools and failing septic systems contaminate groundwater, the only source of drinking water in Charlestown. Conventional septic systems, meanwhile, do little to address the problem of nitrogen loading.

The town’s forward-thinking ordinance that required all cesspools be removed and replaced by 2009 was later modified. A zoned phase-out was implemented that mandated cesspools to be replaced by June 2014. Mission nearly accomplished.

Of the nearly 1,000 cesspools that once marked the local landscape, only 12 remain, according to Dowling.

The removal of the remaining cesspools is being managed through the town’s municipal court or by the Wastewater Management Commission’s waiver program that grants relief to property owners with financial hardships.

Statewide, DEM identified 1,084 cesspools subject to Rhode Island Cesspool Act of 2007 provisions requiring the replacement of those within 200 feet of a coastal shoreline feature, within 200 feet of a public drinking-water well, or within 200 feet of a public drinking-water reservoir, according to an agency spokeswoman.

She recently told ecoRI News that at last check 752 of those cesspools were replaced with a septic system and 147 were removed from service because the property connected to a sewer line, leaving 185 cesspools that haven’t yet come into compliance with the law.

“It is worth noting that these numbers are a snapshot,” she wrote in an e-mail. “There are sites working through the permitting process all the time so it is likely that more cesspools have been removed from service than are reported here.”

There are more than 3,000 onsite wastewater treatment systems in Charlestown’s salt ponds watershed and nearly 84 percent are within a ‘Lands Developed Beyond Carrying Capacity’ area.

Nutrient overload

Conventional septic systems typically have final effluent nitrogen concentrations of 44 milligrams per liter. For a three-bedroom home, this amounts to a nitrogen discharge of some 21 pounds annually.

In Charlestown, there are 3,008 onsite wastewater-treatment systems in the salt ponds watershed. Of those, nearly 84 percent, including 138 systems classified as unpermitted and/or substandard and installed before 1968, are within a Coastal Resources Management Council “Lands Developed Beyond Carrying Capacity” area, which frequently means one residential or commercial unit per one-eighth to half an acre.

In Charlestown, Dowling noted that the housing density is 8-10 dwellings per acre, and each lot has a septic system and well.

“Such intense development was the major source of contamination to groundwater and the salt ponds,” according to the Salt Ponds Region Special Area Management Plan. “High nutrient loadings and contaminated runoff waters were resulting in a high incidence of polluted wells and increasing evidence of eutrophic conditions and bacterial contamination in adjoining salt pond waters.”

Septic systems with nitrogen-reducing technology, however, are designed to lower nitrogen concentrations in wastewater by 50 percent. Dowling and the town are working with property owners to install this technology in the coastal ponds watershed. In the past eight years about 35 septic systems with this technology have been installed in Charlestown.

In 2016, Charlestown received an EPA grant to, among other things, help upgrade 15 substandard septic systems with nitrogen-reducing technology. The chosen homeowners will be compensated 75 percent of the total cost. The $674,201 grant also is funding a quarterly effluent sampling program for up to 50 property owners with denitrification systems.

To make sure that these expensive systems — $25,000 on average — are working properly and not underperforming, Dowling said data are needed to measure nitrogen output and to adjust the systems to meet their optimal nitrogen-reducing capacity. Barnstable County on Cape Cod is running a similar sampling program to help ensure a substantial decrease in nitrogen loading.

If the town were to be sewered — an expensive proposition that would require an agreement with South Kingstown — more property would be opened up to development, Dowling explained. Less nitrogen would be discharged to groundwater and the coastal ponds, but other development pressures would increase.

The four-year grant is also being used to help the town’s voluntary Recommended Landscaper Process partner with Save The Bay to install six demonstration rain gardens on public property, and partner with the Salt Ponds Coalition to establish two surface water sampling stations in Green Hill Pond to track nutrient impacts.

Modeling has demonstrated that fertilizer use contributes as much as 20 percent of the groundwater nitrogen in densely areas where high-maintenance lawns are clustered, according to Dowling.

Lawn chemicals aimed at killing pests, insect or plant, also take a toll on the ponds' health. During a recent visit to the area, two adjacent homes on Powaget Avenue had "Lawn Chemicals Applied" signs in their front yards.

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

 

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Frank Carini: 2 bills could help the rich wall off the R.I. coastline

The maximum building height in Charlestown is 35 feet, plus up to 5 feet of freeboard in flood hazard areas. If Rhode Island Builders Association-supported bills are passed, coastal structures in Charlestown and along the entire coast could get a lo…

The maximum building height in Charlestown is 35 feet, plus up to 5 feet of freeboard in flood hazard areas. If Rhode Island Builders Association-supported bills are passed, coastal structures in Charlestown and along the entire coast could get a lot taller

-- Charlestown Building Department

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

CHARLESTOWN, R.I. — Two bills recently approved by the Rhode Island General Assembly support the construction of taller buildings along the Ocean State’s shoreline, which, according to some municipal planners and building officials, would essentially result in the walling off of the coast.

The bills passed in the House and Senate on June 23, the last day of the 2018 legislative session. The bills now await the governor's signature. If signed by the governor, the new law would go into effect March 1, 2019.

The Rhode Island Builders Association is using the state’s desire to replace Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood maps with more detailed Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) maps as a way to “dramatically increase building height along the coast,” Charlestown town planner Jane Weidman said.

She noted that the bills would essentially increase structure size in coastal areas that are increasingly susceptible to sea-level rise, more frequent and intense storms, and other climate-change impacts.

“It’s not good planning practice in general to build homes that block the shore and obstruct the view,” Weidman said. “We should be retreating or moving away, not promoting larger structures in flood zones. Why do we want to be massing up the most sensitive areas we have?”

The Charlestown Town Council adopted a resolution opposing Senate bill S2413 and its companion House bill H7741. The council, along with Weidman and Joe Warner, the town’s building/zoning official and its floodplain manager, are against altering the state definition of “building height” to allow measurement from base flood elevation instead of existing-grade elevation.

Rhode Island building height has for years been measured from the average natural grade, or from the ground itself, according to Weidman. Under the proposed bills, that way of measuring would stay in the state Zoning Enabling Act of 1991 for all new structures except those being built in flood hazard areas, which would automatically be allowed to go to an elevation equal to base flood elevation as the measuring starting point, she said.

“This new bill would allow for three to three and a half floors instead of two,” Warner said. “We promote elevating above base flood elevation and the changes we made two years ago are working well. This bill isn’t adding any incentive or benefit for flood protection or protection against extreme weather. It does nothing to protect buildings from damage. We’d be building elevated mansions.”

Building and planning officials in South Kingstown, Westerly and Narragansett share similar concerns.

ecoRI News reached out to both CRMC and the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island to get their take on the two bills. The Coastal Resources Center said it didn’t have anyone who could speak in depth about the bills. CRMC acknowledged the request, but didn’t supply a response.

The Conservation Law Foundation testified in April in support of the House bill.

Having the state go from using FEMA maps to CRMC maps to identify flood zones isn’t the problem the Rhode Island chapterof the American Planning Association (APARI) and others have with the bills. The concern is with other wording that has been slipped in and what that could mean for both the look and vulnerability of Rhode Island’s coast.

“This is a lousy bill that will give wealthy land owners the right to block off the shore,” said Weidman, co-chair of the APARI’s Legislative Committee. “Municipalities, and neighbors on the land side, are either going to face higher structures within flood hazard areas or are going to have to amend their zoning codes to reduce total heights in these areas.”

During the 2016 General Assembly session, the state’s definition of building height was debated by planners and builders and eventually amended. Among the major changes made was to allow any property in a flood hazard area to have its building height measured in a way that excludes up to 5 feet of freeboard. Measured in feet, freeboard compensates for flood heights and wave action by raising a building.

This change provided an incentive for property owners in flood hazard areas to go higher than 1 foot above base flood elevation, which is the current requirement in the state building code. It’s a good law and it’s working, Warner said.

The so-called “freeboard bill” passed without noticeable opposition from the Rhode Island planning community. Developers were happy, because, as freeboard height requirements increased in recent years, they said local height restrictions were limiting building.

The 2016 bill that was adopted, however, was much different than the original ask. Builders wanted more, Weidman said, and these two current bills resurrect some of that old language, including “for any property located in a flood hazard area, the building height shall be measured from the base flood elevation.”

Both Weidman and Warner recently told ecoRI News that the bills’ provision requiring that building height in flood hazard areas be measured from base flood elevation should be removed, as it was two years ago.

“This bill tells us how to measure height,” Warner said. “Each community should be free to decide what works best for it. This bill would increase the risk of wind damage to the larger buildings it would allow."

They both agreed that the current definition doesn’t need to be changed, and if it were to be by these bills, it would result in a dramatic change in how building height is defined and, without corresponding changes to a municipality’s building-height limits in coastal zones, would result in buildings with excessive height and bulk along Rhode Island’s coast.

Weidman is worried that the concerns of planners and builders will again be ignored by those on Smith Hill.

“There’s no pushback against the builders. We don’t have that standing in the General Assembly like they do,” she said. “We can’t get our bills out of committee. These bills are a complete giveaway to builders.”

Warner is concerned too few people, most notably municipal planners and building officials, understand the true impact these bills will have if they pass.

“There has been no real thought of the bills’ consequences,” he said. “There will be plenty of uproar when building permits are pulled and neighbors see the size of beachfront homes to be built.”

For instance, Warner noted that the maximum building height in Charlestown is 35 feet, plus up to 5 feet of freeboard in flood hazard areas. If the Rhode Island Builders Association-supported bills are passed, he said Charlestown could see buildings as high as 56 feet along the shore.

“It’s about economic development,” Weidman said. “It’s not about good growth, good land use, or good environmental practices. It’s all about economic development. Our land use needs to be done in a comprehensive manner, not caving to what builders want.”

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

 

 

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Frank Carini: Oil dumping continues to mar New Bedford Harbor

A weirdly beautiful oil sheen on the waters of New Bedford Harbor.Photo by Frank Carini

A weirdly beautiful oil sheen on the waters of New Bedford Harbor.

Photo by Frank Carini

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

NEW BEDFORD, Mass.

Oil sheens have long stained one of the country’s most historic harbors. Visits by tourists to enjoy seaside sights and sample local seafood at harborside restaurants can be marred by these distinct marine markings.

In late February, the Coast Guard and Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) were called to New Bedford Harbor after oil was spotted lapping up against the docks and fishing vessels at Leonard’s Wharf. About two drums worth of oil was recovered. The source was never identified.

Six months later, in mid-August, Coast Guard crews oversaw a fuel-spill cleanup after a tugboat captain called the Coast Guard to report a 62-foot fishing vessel had sunk and was discharging fuel. The vessel carried about 7,000 gallons of fuel. The spill spread some 1.5 miles to Fairhaven.

Since 2010, the marine-industrial harbor has seen at least one recorded oil spill every month, according to the Buzzards Bay Coalition.

“New Bedford Harbor has a chronic oil spill problem,” a Coast Guard press release noted earlier this year.

The harbor’s spill problem doesn’t mix well with a 2009 study titled “Evaluation of Marine Oil Spill Threat to Massachusetts Coastal Communities,” which noted that, “New Bedford Harbor reported the highest number of vessels, with a fleet size of 500, many of which are large offshore scallopers and draggers. The GPE (gallons of petroleum exposure) for the New Bedford Harbor fishing fleet is estimated at 7,500,000 gallons, more than three times the next largest amount.”

Much of the Port of New Bedford’s petroleum problems can be traced back to the accidental and intentional dumping of oil via bilge water from commercial fishing vessels. Fuel and oil can leak into a vessel’s bilge, or the engine block can be deliberately drained into the bilge. This mixture of water, oil and fuel is released into the marine environment when an automatic bilge pump turns on, or when a boat owner deliberately breaks the law and pumps the bilge out in the harbor or out at sea. It's been a problem for decades.

These chronic oil discharges have been a longtime concern for Joe Costa, executive director of the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program. The 1991 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) for Buzzards Bay highlighted the problem. It remained an identified concern in the 2013 Buzzards Bay CCMP.

It remains a concern today. Since 2016, more than 70 oil sheens have been reported in the water between New Bedford and Fairhaven. In most cases, no one steps forward to claim responsibility, according to the Coast Guard’s New Bedford field office.

Port director Edward Anthes-Washburn acknowledged that the problem is exacerbated when ships pump out contaminated bilge water.

“We have a concentration of vessels like nowhere else on the East Coast,” he said, noting that the working harbor is the home port of 300 fishing vessels and services another 200. “There’s no doubt bilge water is an issue. We’re working on education, and reporting spills.”

Anthes-Washburn, who also serves as the executive director of the New Bedford Harbor Development Commission (HDC), noted that fuel barges operated by oil retailers pump out waste oil for free, as long as it’s not contaminated by seawater.

And therein lies the real issue: too many owners fail to properly maintain their vessels, some of which are 20 to 30 years old. Advocates for a cleaner harbor believe the city needs to be more actively engaged in implementing a solution.

For instance, the HDC’s Fishing for Energy program collects derelict fishing nets and burns them for fuel. But the program doesn’t accept hazardous waste such as used oil contaminated by salt water.

“This problem has been worked on for 30 years and the ending is always the same: nothing gets done,” said Dan Crafton, section chief of emergency response for DEP’s Lakeville, Mass.-based unit. “The city doesn’t want to do anything to increase the burden on fishermen. But there are necessary components to running a clean harbor.”

Slow motion


As far back as the early 1990s, the reduction of discharges of oil and other hydrocarbons into New Bedford Harbor was identified as a high priority. The 1991 Buzzards Bay CCMP noted:

“Commercial fishing vessels, which operate mostly out of New Bedford but also Westport, usually have their engine oil changed (10-120 gallons per boat) after practically every trip. It is believed that the inconvenience and the expense (about 30 cents per gallon) of safely disposing of waste oil has resulted in a number of boat operators blatantly dumping oil into the Bay or offshore waters.”

The 270-page report also noted that, “Although this is illegal, it is difficult to document violations and hence take enforcement actions against the appropriate fishing boats.”

A January 1993 report titled “New Bedford Harbor Marine Pump-Out Facilities Study” and prepared for the HDC by HMM Associates Inc. noted that the disposal of vessel-generated waste oil “is unquestionably the single most important water quality protection initiative that must be implemented by municipal authorities if advances in water quality improvements are to be made within the harbor.”

The report also noted that the “unknown fate of over 252,000 gallons of engine waste oil known to be generated by the home fleet and not collected, is just too important to ignore.”

In 2000, Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program's Costa wrote a proposal titled A Boat Waste Oil Recovery Program for New Bedford Harbor to address the problem and received grant money from two sources. However, the initiative, which included building a bilge-water-oil separation facility along New Bedford’s working waterfront, failed to gain traction, due in large part to a lack of support from local officials. Costa ended up returning the grant money.

Crafton said the city isn't interested in a waterfront bilge-water-oil separator, even if the state funded the upfront costs. The city would have had to provide some operational funding. The cost to boaters to properly dispose of waste oil is about 50 cents a gallon, according to Crafton.

“Jiffy Lube charges car owners to dispose of their waste oil,” he said. “It’s harder to dump oil on the ground and get away with it. Most spills in the harbor happen at night, not during the day. People need to be more environmentally aware.”

Crafton also noted that DEP hasn't been able to find a private property owner interested in hosting a separator facility.

ecoRI News contacted the mayor’s office, but comment for this story was left to the HDC, a city agency. Mayor Jonathan Mitchell is the chairman of the HDC Commissioners.

“Our grant request to DEP for an oil recovery facility will address one major remaining source identified in the CCMP, the accidental and sometimes intentional dumping of tens or hundreds of thousands of oil by commercial vessels via bilge water,” according to Costa’s 17-year-old proposal. “The net environmental benefit of funding this initiative will be the prevention of 100,000 of gallons of oil and hydrocarbons from entering the coastal environment.”

The plan was specifically designed to eliminate “imposing oil disposal costs to an economically disadvantaged fishing industry.” Besides building a bilge-water-oil separation facility, the plan also proposed implementing an oil-recovery recycling program to provide easy and safe disposal of boat engine waste oil, a multilingual outreach/education program, and providing training and assistance to oil retailers.

The 1993 HMM Associates study recommended eight specific actions to address the improper disposal of waste oil, from adopting local regulations requiring oil-free bilges in commercial vessels to creating a private commercial service that would pump out waste oil from commercial vessels free of charge.

Costa’s 2000 proposal noted “little was done to implement these recommendations.” Costa estimated that as much as 60,000 to 120,000 gallons of waste oil are dumped, leaked and spilled into local waters annually by New Bedford Harbor’s commercial fishing fleet.

Today, nearly two decades later, New Bedford’s fishing fleet doesn’t have as many vessels and more boat owners are recycling waste oil properly. But a significant amount of used boat oil, which is considered hazardous waste, is still unnecessarily finding its way into New Bedford Harbor and Buzzards Bay.

Anthes-Washburn said the HDC doesn’t focus on the enforcement of state and federal regulations. He noted that the municipal agency is focused foremost on keeping its customers, the port’s commercial fishing fleet, safe.

“We report everything we see,” he said. “The fleet knows law enforcement is looking at it.”

Those concerned about this marine hydrocarbon problem point to several factors: no identified source or responsible party; poor waste oil management practices; underutilized disposal options; reluctance to report spills; lack of awareness.

“We want to work with fishermen, not against them,” Crafton said. “We’re not trying to harm the fishing industry.”

Addressing the problem
It’s been a while since the practice of pumping contaminated water from the bilges of fishing boats into the ocean has been legal. Under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, no amount of oil is allowed to be pumped into the sea — understandable, since a cup of oil can create a sheen the size of a football field.

Lt. Lynn Schrayshuen, the Coast Guard’s New Bedford unit supervisor, and her Marine Safety Detachment team patrol New Bedford Harbor regularly looking for spilled, leaked or dumped oil. When an oil sheen is discovered, or reported, the team investigates to determine if it is recoverable, and collects a sample.

Collected samples are taken to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Lab in New London, Conn., for testing. The samples are processed and cleaned of organic material until only oil is left. If the oil fingerprint from the sheen matches the fingerprint from another bilge sample, the team may be able to identify a responsible party.

But the illegal practice, including the common practice of pumping water out from the bilge and then stopping when oil enters the stream, remains a considerable problem for New Bedford Harbor, the city’s coastline, and across the way in Fairhaven.

To deal with the problem, DEP and the HDC ran a pilot program called Clean Bilge New Bedford that offered free pump-outs and inspections to commercial fishing vessels to prevent oil spills, and featured outreach and educational efforts. The 1.5-year pilot, which was state funded, ended earlier this year. During the pilot program, 174 vessels had their bilge pumped out once and 39 had their bilge pumped out at least twice. A total of 58,666 gallons of oily bilge water was recovered — 18,387 gallons, or 31 percent, was oil.

“This is a real issue,” Crafton said. “What would people think if they knew the number one fishing port in the United States is the same place where waste oil is being dumped?”

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News (ecori.org)

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Frank Carini: Debating the future of 'the most important fish in the sea'

Atlantic menhaden.

Atlantic menhaden.

Via ecoRI.org (ecori.org)

Even though menhaden are a fish that few people eat, they are currently at the center of a heated dispute between the commercial fishing industry and environmental organizations. The two sides are pushing contradictory narratives about the importance of menhaden to the marine food web.

During its two-day meeting, Nov. 13-14 in Baltimore, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission(ASMFC) is expected to vote on Amendment 3 — a proposal to provide stronger protections for Atlantic menhaden.

Rhode Island’s three representatives on the commission are Sen. Susan Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown, David Borden, representing Gov. Gina Raimondo, and Robert Ballou, assistant to the director at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, who also serves as chairman of the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board.

Conservationists often refer to the species as “the most important fish in the sea” — after the title of a 2007 book by H. Bruce Franklin. They note that menhaden deserve special attention and protection because so many other species, such as bluefish, dolphins, eagles, humpback whales, osprey, sharks, striped bass and weakfish, depend on them for food.

In a recent press release, The Nature Conservancy called the species a “small fish with outsized importance for ocean health.” The conservancy also sent a letter to the ASMFC outlining the organization’s recommended management changes, such as adjusting coast-wide total allowable catch allocations to better reflect the current distribution and abundance of menhaden from Maine to Florida.

Menhaden are often referred to as ‘the most important fish in the sea.’

Save The Bay has also come out in favor of better protecting the menhaden population. The Providence-based organization favors a more ecosystem-based management approach.

“Atlantic menhaden play a central role in the ecological and economic vitality of the Atlantic coastal ecosystem as an essential food for whales and important commercial and game fishes and a host of other marine wildlife,” according to a Save The Bay press release. “Menhaden are also a key force in the regulation of regional water quality by filtering phytoplankton, which are the menhaden’s food source and a major cause of algae blooms and brown tides.”

The Nature Conservancy and Save The Bay, along with the Audubon Society and some scientists and fishermen, have urged the ASMFC to establish a new management approach that accounts for marine wildlife forage needs when menhaden harvest limits are annually set.

“Abundant menhaden is good for fish and wildlife ... and good for the economy,” John Torgan, The Nature Conservancy’s Rhode Island state director, said. “Rhode Islanders care about menhaden because they are critical to the health of Narragansett Bay and the larger coastal ecosystem, and have an enormous effect on other vital industries, like fishing and tourism.”

During the past five years, the menhaden population has rebounded, according to The Nature Conservancy, as indicated by ASMFC stock assessments and reports of large menhaden schools at numerous locations along the Atlantic Coast, including Narragansett Bay.

Prior to 2012, however, the Atlantic menhaden fishery was managed without a total annual harvest limit. Amid concerns about the health of the population, the ASMFC passed Amendment 2 that year, capping annual harvests at about 20 percent less than average landings from 2009-11.

The Nature Conservancy, concerned that the fate of continued menhaden recovery still remains uncertain, teamed up with Red Vault Productions to produce a video that captured the perspectives of five New York stakeholders on why abundant menhaden is good for New York’s ecology and economy.

While people rarely eat menhaden — an oily fish often called “pogies” or “bunkers” by New Englanders — more pounds of the fish are harvested each year than any other in the United States except Alaska pollock.

Last year, for example, the Atlantic menhaden harvest totaled some 400 million pounds, with about 76 percent used for livestock, pet and aquaculture feed, for various fish-oil products, and added to fertilizers. Much of the remaining supply was sold as bait in recreational and commercial fisheries.

“Rhode Island’s saltwater anglers, who spend millions of dollars pursuing their interest, believe this is the most important fisheries issue to come up for a vote in years,” said Rich Hittinger, vice president of the 7,500-member Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association. “It is clear that the vast majority of those with an interest in menhaden support ecological management of this fish.”

The commercial menhaden fishing industry, however, has a vastly different take. The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition claims widespread misconceptions about Atlantic menhaden, saying “the science shows a healthy and sustainable fishery” and noting that the ASMFC found in its 2017 stock assessment that Atlantic menhaden is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.

“It is true that menhaden serve as ‘forage’ for larger predators, but their importance in marine food webs is frequently overstated,” according to a Menhaden Fisheries Coalition press kit.

The coalition points to a study published in April in Fisheries Research by Ray Hilborn that claims fishing for forage species such as menhaden likely has a lower impact on predators than previously thought.

There seems to be little correlation between the number of predator species in the water and the number of forage fish, making it nearly impossible to determine a catch level that is appropriate for forage fish as a whole, according to the study. Other variables include the natural variability of forage fish, which is different from species to species, and relative locations of predators and forage species.

The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition teamed up with industry-funded Saving Seafood to produce two videosand a 27-page booklet titled “Faces of the Menhaden Fishery" to support their stance.

Menhaden is the second-largest U.S. fishery, and two states, New Jersey and Virginia, control about 96 percent of the coast-wide quota.

Since last November, the ASMFC has received more than 126,000 public comments concerning Atlantic menhaden, the most the commission has ever received regarding the management of a fishery.

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

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Frank Carini: Selfish climate-change deniers helping to ruin the world for short-term profit

Climate-change deniers are selfish, or possibly scared. The debate they have managed to manufacture is artificial, like much of the food we consume. It’s fake news.

Whatever you want to call it — climate change, global warming, overpopulation — humans, in a short period of cosmic time, have had a tremendous impact on the planet, its climate and its ecosystems. Much of it to the detriment of life.

To think  that 7.5 billion people, plus the more than 100 billion who have come and gone, haven’t had an impact is the very definition of denial. Why can’t we admit it and work to lessen the impact. The answer, sadly, is simple: greed. Sacrifice is for someone else.

We spew some 9.5 gigatons of global greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels into the atmosphere annually. We’ve done so for decades. One gigaton is equivalent to a billion metric tons, or more than 100 million African elephants or 6 million blue whales. If you think all that accumulating pollution isn’t having an impact on the planet, on the climate, you are divorced from reality. Pull your head out of the tar sands.

Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, which we generate in abundance, are altering the climate, changing ocean chemistry and helping the seas rise. Science doesn’t lie. But politicians, CEOs and Big Business frequently do.

Diversity created the planet on which we live, and we have spent our limited existence on this sphere stamping it out, for short-term individual gain.

Our hubris led directly to the demise of passenger pigeons, Carolina parakeets and great auks, to name but a few. We have overfished and trashed the oceans. We felled cypress forests to sell mulch. New Orleans drowned as a result.

We treat the planet and life on it as if it is a free all-you-can-eat buffet. Profit trumps life. Drill, mountain mine and blast, baby.

Climate-change deniers like to argue that the planet’s rising seas and changing climate are just part of a natural cycle. They’re correct, but they also like to ignore the fact our activities play a major role. We’re changing and speeding up the process. We’re putting future generations at risk, and destroying life-creating/sustaining natural systems.

We’ve replaced natural coastal buffers, such as salt marshes and mangroves, with homes, roads, restaurants and tourist attractions, making our built-up shorelines vulnerable to storm surge, flooding and erosion. We're currently filling runoff-capturing wetlands to build another Rhode Island casino.

We dynamite and bleach coral reefs to capture fish for aquariums. We poach rhinos and elephants for their ivory. We slaughter sharks for their fins. None of these ongoing massacres are required for our survival.

We support diversity-killing monoculture so multinationals can control the world’s food supply. We poison water resources to save money or make money.

The only way to get better is to admit we're having an impact, a bigly one. We need to be educated and conscious consumers. We need to be stewards, not mindless devourers. It requires sacrifice.

Frank Carini is editor of the ecoRI News.

 

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Frank Carini: Pushing against southern New England's rising tide of toxic plastic

-- Photo by Frank Carini

-- Photo by Frank Carini

Via ecoRI.org

There’s an estimated 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the world’s oceans. Some 8 million tons of plastic enter the sea annually. How much is floating in local marine waters remains a mystery. An answer may be forthcoming, though, as researchers will spend five days next week scouring Narragansett Bay for plastic.

The July 18-22 trash trawl is being conducted by the Rhode Island chapter of Clean Water Action (CWA) to raise public awareness about the most invasive “species” in the ocean: plastic.

Johnathan Berard, state director of CWA Rhode Island, was the policy director at Blue Water Baltimore when the organization partnered with Trash Free Maryland a few years ago to conduct a similar trawl of Chesapeake Bay. While the amount of visible plastic collected was “striking,” the four-day effort also captured a “great deal” of micoplastics — likely photodegraded pieces of plastic bags and wrappers — fishing line, and cellophane rip-strips from cigarette packs.

The Chesapeake Bay trawl and a similar one done on the Hudson River were for scientific research. The Narragansett Bay trawl is more of an advocacy project.

“We want to get elected officials, the press and advocates face to face with the problem,” Berard said. “A jar of Narragansett Bay water filled with plastic is a powerful image.”

Next week’s five-day sweep will employ an ultra-fine mesh net designed to capture micorplastics, microbeads and micofibers. These tiny plastic particles represent the planet’s next big environmental and public-health concern.

Microfibers from polyester fleeces and other synthetic clothing are an emerging concern when it comes to the quality of drinking water. Neither washers nor wastewater treatment facilities are designed to remove these accumulating bits of plastic.

“We can’t keep pushing plastic into the economy,” Berard said. “It wreaks havoc once it’s out in the environment. We find this stuff in our water. It’s in the fish we eat. On our beaches. It’s going to get to a point when it will be too gross to go to the beach or eat fish.”

Plastic packaging isn’t well recycled, or reused. (As You Sow)

Throwaway Economy


The United States alone tosses out 25 billion Styrofoam cups annually, more than 300 million straws daily, and some 3 million plastic bottles every hour of every day. Few of these items are recycled or reused.

“The current system pumps tons of plastic into the economy and environment,” said Jamie Rhodes, program director for UPSTREAM. “The scope of the problem is huge. We can’t burn or recycle our way out of this problem.”

Southern New England is certainly home to its share of plastic pollution. But how much? No one ecoRI News spoke with for this story has any idea, and while they all would be interested in finding out, their bigger concern is how to lessen the local impact of a global problem.

But, as Rhodes, former chairman of the Environmental Council of Rhode Island, noted, we can’t simply ban plastic. “Plastic has raised people out of poverty. I, for one, don’t want a computer made of iron,” he said. “But it’s overused. We need to use it more wisely.”

What is considered a “wise use,” however, can be subjective. One person might think wrapping a cucumber or apple in plastic is a ridiculous waste of resources and feeds the growing waste stream. Another person might argue that such a use of plastic prolongs shelf life and reduces organic waste.

What can’t be debated is the amount of plastic litter collected at beach cleanups in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, roadside debris seen through moving windows, and the flotsam and jetsam that bob in the region’s waters.

“Plastics suck in chemicals. That’s what they’re good at,” Rhodes said. “What’s the long-term impact on humans, on the environment?”

Dave McLaughlin, executive director of Middletown, R.I.-based Clean Ocean Access, noted that “we don’t know the implications of the bioaccumulation of plastics in humans.”

“They’re endocrine disruptors and that is some scary stuff,” he said. “It’s important that we understand the severity of the issue.”

Plastic bags float in Buzzards Bay, Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay like jellyfish. Turtles, whales and other marine animals often mistake them for food, causing many to starve or choke to death. In fact, all of southern New England’s fresh and salt waters, from hidden brooks to popular beaches, are touched by plastic — a toxic problem that threatens wildlife and public health.

Adult seabirds inadvertently feed small pieces of plastic to their chicks, often causing them to die when their stomachs become filled with petroleum byproducts. As plastic breaks down into smaller fragments — microplastics that may contain toxic chemicals as part of their original plastic material or adsorbed environmental contaminants such as PCBs — fish and shellfish become increasingly vulnerable to the toxins these polluted particles collect.

At least two-thirds of the world’s fish stocks are suffering from plastic ingestion, according to estimates, as much of the planet’s plastic pollution eventually makes its way into the ocean. Local seafood favorites such as stripers and quahogs, for example, are vital to southern New England’s marine food web and the region’s economy.

The countless plastic bags, plastic bottles and plastic wrap strewn along southern New England’s coastline, swimming in the region’s rivers, ponds and lakes, waving from trees, and loitering in parks were each likely used only once, and for just a few minutes. These petroleum byproducts, however, don’t biodegrade. They remain in the environment for centuries. Their long-term impact on environmental and public health is not yet fully understood, and barely studied.

“We’ve plasticized the entire biosphere, including our bodies,” Marcus Eriksen, research director and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, said during a March panel discussion at Brown University titled “The Plastic Ocean.” “The impact of plastic is widespread.”

The world’s plastic problem was first acknowledged in the 1970s. A 1973 survey of the plastic materials accumulating on a private beach on Conanicut Island in Narragansett Bay, for instance, found that the plastic pollutants “were mainly a by-product of recreational activities within the bay and not household, industrial or agricultural refuse.”

The study also noted that “plastic objects manufactured from polyethylene made up the bulk of the flotsam on the beach.” Among the plastic items collected were milk-shake tops, beer-can carriers, fish-hook bags, straws, bleach containers and shotgun pellet holders.

In 1987, the United States eventually responded to the growing plastic problem, with the passage of the Marine Plastic Pollution Research and Control Act. The law, which went to effect Dec. 31, 1988, made it illegal for any U.S. vessel or land-based operation to dispose of plastics in the ocean.

However, this act and other laws like it, such as the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, can’t compete with mass consumption in a throwaway society. Their effectiveness is further limited by Washington, D.C.’s relentless assault on environmental protections, and by non-existent or lax waste-management practices in much of Southeast Asia and in developing countries.

Some four decades since the problems associated with plastic manufacturing and use were first identified, apathy, ignorance, convenience and profit have led to an addiction that is trashing the planet and putting human health at risk.

While our plastic reliance, especially for single-use items, grows, the reuse and recycling of this material has essentially flatlined. Waste-management practices can’t keep pace with the volume of production and the relentless tidal wave of new plastic packaging.

Currently, less than 15 percent of plastics packaging is recycled worldwide, according to As You Sow, a nonprofit foundation chartered to promote corporate social responsibility.

As You Sow is one of about 800 organizations worldwide, including UPSTREAM and the Story of Stuff, united in the goal of dramatically reducing the production of single-use plastic packaging, containers and bags. It’s known as the Break Free From Plastic movement.

Since most plastic is made from fossil fuels, the issue of plastic manufacturing, use and waste is also one of climate change.

“It’s fuel early on, a kid’s juice pouch in the middle, and a fuel at the end,” UPSTREAM’s Rhodes said.

Litter, especially of the plastic variety, costs taxpayers plenty. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News)

Local Impact


Plastic pollution doesn’t just ruin beach getaways and picnics in the park. It also harms the limited exposure many urban children have to nature, according to Leah Bamberger, Providence’s sustainability director.

Last year, the city had a study done to better understand how Providence residents, most notably children, perceive nature and how they use the city’s parks and open spaces. The study found that among the main concerns of children and their parents was the cleanliness of outdoor spaces, particularly litter in parks.

“Litter was the number one barrier that kept kids from enjoying nature and our parks,” Bamberger said. “It debunked the myth that urban kids don’t care about nature.”

Dealing with the region’s litter problem, much of which is some form of plastic, requires taxpayer funding and the ample use of unpaid time.

Staff and volunteers of Clean Ocean Access (COA) have spent the past 11 years cleaning up the Aquidneck Island shoreline. In that time, volunteers have worked nearly 14,000 hours and picked up some 95,000 pounds of debris, much of it plastic, according to McLaughlin, the nonprofit’s executive director.

“There’s litter that’s preventable — the stuff that blows out the back of pickup trucks — and then there’s illegal dumping that’s intentional,” he said. “Most of the plastic we find is from the society of convenience, like packaging and single-use items. A small piece of plastic has a pretty big impact.”

Of the 94,487 pounds of debris collected during 457 cleanups held between 2006 and 2016, much of it was plastic-based, such as bottles, food wrappers, fishing line, straws and cigarette filters, according to the 10-year anniversary report released by COA earlier this year.

All those cigarette butts nonchalantly flicked from car windows and haphazardly dropped on the ground, along with tobacco packaging and plastic lighters, represent one of the main sources of marine debris worldwide. Cigarette butts are made from a plastic called cellulose acetate. It doesn't biodegrade, and can persist in the environment for a long time. This plastic also contains toxins that can leech into water and soil, harming plants and wildlife.

On World Oceans Day, June 8, COA held a coastal cleanup at Easton’s Beach in Newport. Seventy-two volunteers collected 160 pounds of debris, including 1,700 cigarette butts.

Unsurprisingly, plastic bags also make up a good chunk of the organization’s shoreline hauls. Between 2013 and 2016, for example, volunteers picked up 11,874 bags.

The Aquidneck Island coastline, however, isn’t the sole domain for litter. The waters off Newport, Middletown and Portsmouth are also teaming with debris, most notably Newport Harbor. The Rozalia Project has documented a concentration of trash in the historic harbor at 41 million pieces of litter per square kilometer. Trash covers 25.2 percent of the harbor’s seafloor. It’s been dubbed Beer Can Reef, although much of the debris is plastic bottles and cups.

The Long Island Sound Study notes that marine debris is a nuisance and hazard for boaters. For instance, floating lines can foul a boat’s propellers, and chunks of plastic or plastic bags can block an engine’s cooling-water intake.

“While floatable debris in the open waters of Long Island Sound is less concentrated than in the neighboring New York-New Jersey Harbor estuary and in western Long Island Sound embayments, it is present in great enough quantities to mar the aesthetic enjoyment of the Sound,” according to the program that was started in 1985 by the Environmental Protection Agency and the states of New York and Connecticut to improve and protect the water quality of Long Island Sound. “Debris floating in the waters of the Sound can accumulate along with detached seaweed and marsh grass into large surface ‘slicks.’ These slicks can wash ashore fouling beaches and the coastline.”

Plastic caught in fences, lying on beaches, blowing around open spaces and carried by stormwater runoff into the region’s sensitive estuaries is much more than an eyesore. It’s pollution, and it has economic, ecological and public-health impacts. It’s a macro-, micro- and nano-scale problem.

To get a rough idea of the amount of litter accumulating in Rhode Island, McLaughlin did some conservative guesstimating. He figured if 5 percent of the state’s 1 million residents littered once a month, accidental or not, Rhode Island would see 600,000 new pieces of wind-blown trash annually. If 5 percent of the Ocean State’s 3.5 million annual visitors did the same, another 2.1 million pieces would be added to the landscape.

Collectively, southern New England taxpayers spend millions of dollars annually to clean up and prevent litter, much of which is of the plastic variety. Providence and other cities have to spend time and money notifying businesses to keep their Dumpsters closed, so trash doesn’t blow away or get spread about town by animals. DPWs have to clean vacant lots of trash and clear clogged storm drains and catch basins.

It also costs taxpayers when loads of municipal recycling are contaminated — plastic bags are one of the biggest contaminators; biodegradable and compostable plastics are also problem contaminants — and the collected material must then be buried or burned, instead of sold to recyclers.

Despite her relentless efforts organizing cleanups, Massachusetts resident Bonne Combs says, ‘We can’t clean our way out of this problem.’ (Courtesy photo)

No one pays Bonnie Combs to pick up after others. The Blackstone, Mass., resident is a relentless reuser and recycler. She conducts daily one-woman cleanups, at Stump Pond in Smithfield, R.I., up and down the banks of the Blackstone River and in her neighborhood, to name just a few spots. She founded Bird Brain Designs by Bonnie to repurpose animal feed bags into reusable shopping bags.

The marketing director for the Blackstone Heritage Corridor (BHC) manages the organization’s Trash Responsibly program. She also started the BHC’s Fish Responsiblyprogram, which works with businesses, such as Ocean State Tackle in Providence and Barry’s Bait & Tackle in Worcester, and the Audubon Society to make sure monofilament fishing line and spools are recycled properly.

Combs regularly sees firsthand the pervasiveness of southern New England’s plastic problem. She said nips are a “huge problem.” She picks up plenty of iced-coffee cups wrapped in both Styrofoam and plastic, and sees discarded plastic packaging everywhere.

“It’s becoming harder and harder to buy everyday products in recyclable packaging. It’s really frightening,” Combs said. “We have a waste problem. We need to go on a waste diet.”

Since this month is Plastic Free July, perhaps southern New England should start dieting now. But dieting is hard. Much of the world’s food and drink, from coffee to baby food, is now wrapped and shipped in plastic.

Addressing the region’s plastic problem, however, is complicated and will require more than avoiding plastic utensils, plastic bags, plastic water bottles, plastic straws and mylar balloons for a month. McLaughlin, of Clean Ocean Access, said the issue demands a three-pronged approach: policy, which he called “the stick;” technology/innovation, “business taking the lead;” and engagement, “the carrot.”

McLaughlin believes, at this moment at least, all three legs are a little too short.

“It starts with people becoming educated, connected and stewards of the environment,” he said. “We just can’t ban our way to a healthy ocean.”

Policy Improvements


Since the late 1960s, plastic shopping bags have been clogging storm drains, degrading marine ecosystems, choking animals, littering beaches and leaching estrogenic chemicals, but the Ocean State and its two southern New England neighbors lack the political will to enact statewide bans. The American Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute and other lobbyists hold more sway than in-your-face environmental degradation and public-health concerns.

The environmental/public-health impacts associated with plastic manufacturing and disposal include greenhouse-gas emissions, and water and land pollution. For instance, a billion discarded plastic bags is the equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil. These costs are largely ignored.

Lobbyists from D.C. and parts unknown descend whenever a statewide ban or local one is discussed in Connecticut, Massachusetts or Rhode Island. They argue that consumers benefit from the use of plastic bags, because they can easily carry goods without the burden of lugging around reusable bags. They note that plastic bags handed out by retailers are reused as pet-waste containers or to line household trash receptacles. They say properly collected and recycled plastic bags — they shouldn’t be placed in curbside recycling bins and instead be brought back to stores for collection — are made into a composite product used as a wood substitute for decks and stairs.

Unfortunately, only a small percentage of plastic bags are actually recycled. In Rhode Island alone, some 190 million plastic bags are consumed annually, according to a 2006 Brown University study, and only about 9 percent are recycled.

Lobbyists, however, have failed to sway some local municipalities. Three Rhode Island communities — Barrington, Middletown and Newport — have passed bans on plastic retail bags. About 35 municipalities in Massachusetts have similar bans. The first municipality in New England to ban plastic checkout bags was Westport, Conn., in 2008.

While lawmakers in southern New England’s three states have been slow to adequately address the region’s role in the world’s plastic problem, a few western states have attempted to change the paradigm. California enacted a statewide plastic-bag ban last year, despite intense lobbying by plastics manufacturers. A 2013 study of San Jose’s bag ban helped pave the way for California’s statewide ban. The study found that after San Jose enacted its bag ban, there was nearly 90 percent less plastic debris in the city’s storm drains and about 60 percent less plastic street litter.

In Hawaii, all four of the state’s county councils and the city of Honolulu have passed some type of bag ordinance that has effectively banned plastic retail bags in the 50th state.SThis year, Connecticut debated a proposal to put a 5-cent tax on single-use plastic and paper shopping bags. The city of Providence has warned and then fined residents who continue to use their recycling bins for trash. On June 22, for example, the city’s five enforcement officers wrote 50 tickets.

McLaughlin, of Clean Ocean Access, noted that states and municipalities need to support, fund and enforce waste-diversion efforts. In Rhode Island, at least at the state level, resources for such efforts are scarce. In the three decades since the state’s recycling law was enacted, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management has neither warned nor fined any business for noncompliance.

Bag bans, bag taxes, fines and enforcement, while all part of the solution puzzle, aren’t the key pieces. Producer responsibility, also known as product stewardship, enlists manufactures in the disposal and recycling of the hazardous and bulky goods they produce. In southern New England, producer-responsibility programs already exist for mercury thermometers and thermostats, paint, and mattresses.

Bamberger, Providence’s sustainability director, Rhodes, of UPSTREAM, and CWA’s Berard all told ecoRI News that producer responsibility is vital to local, national and global efforts to reduce plastic pollution, minimize packaging and change practices.

“Bans are nice, but they’re not a good solution,” Bamberger said. “Producer responsibility is the most effective way to manage the waste stream.”

Berard said, “Manufacturers can’t just put all this material into the economy and then have no skin in the game post-use.”

One of UPSTREAM’S focus points is helping make producers more responsible, here and across the globe.

“Companies need to be part of the solution,” Rhodes said. “We need policies to stop the flow of single-use plastic. This isn’t the system we’ve always had. We created it; we can change it.”

Innovation and Technology


They look like small, floating Dumpsters. In their first year of use, the two trash skimmers attached to docks at Perrotti Park removed more than 6,000 pounds of debris from Newport Harbor. Much of the litter was of the usual-suspect variety — plastic food wrappers, straws and bags, and fishing line.

COA’s Newport Harbor Trash Skimmer Projectwas implemented last August, and made possible by funding from 11th Hour Racing. Some 30 units, manufactured by Washington-based Marina Trash Skimmers, are in use on the West Coast and Hawaii. The two installed in Newport Harbor are believed to be the first ones in use on the East Coast.

They operate essentially as large pool skimmers, filtering water 24 hours a day and capturing floating debris and absorbing surface oil or other contaminants. The skimmers are powered by a three-fourths-horsepower electric engine that costs $2 a day to run. Hundreds of gallons of water flow through the units every few hours, and the skimmers are minimally invasive to marine life.

COA has since added a trash skimmer at Fort Adams State Park and at New England Boatworks, in Portsmouth.

“These units are highly effective in removing floating marine debris,” COA’s McLaughlin said. “But we can’t put trash skimmers everywhere.”

A similar piece of equipment in use in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor also removes debris, including plastic litter, from the water. The water-powered wheel deposits the scooped-out trash into a Dumpster. When there isn’t enough water current, a solar panel attached to the unit provides additional power.

New technology, whether it’s floating Dumpsters or trashy water wheels, play a role in controlling litter. To better address plastic manufacturing and use, however, advanced packaging innovations will have to play a bigger role.

Public Engagement


Solving the problem of plastic pollution can’t be done by stopping littering and improving recycling rates. Producer responsibility alone won’t end the deluge. The effort must include education and outreach, to curb such issues as “wishful recycling.” It’s also about changing behaviors — something as simple as restaurants asking if you want a straw rather than just giving you one.

According to a study recently done by UPSTREAM for the city of Providence, one way to address the issue at an individual consumer level is to incentivize behavior to reduce single-use items, such as being allowed to cut the line at the coffee shop if you bring your own mug.

Much of the outreach is needed to make people aware that the region’s plastic problem isn’t magically fixed curbside, or at a transfer station, landfill or incinerator.

“We see litter on the streets and plastics in the ocean, but when we put our recycling out at the curb, we don’t care or know what happens next,” Rhodes said. “Much of the this material is shipped to small, developing countries like the Philippines and Malaysia, where poor waste pickers go through it.”

McLaughlin said the overuse of plastic is a solvable problem. He said it starts with individuals taking action.

“We have to take care of each other and the environment. That’s how we are going to make progress,” McLaughlinsaid. “We have to get people involved at the local level to take action."

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

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Frank Carini: Algae bloom forces town to dose pond with sulfate

This aerial photo was taken in August 2015 by Halifax Police Chief Ted Broderick. A thick mat of blue-green algae covers much of West Monponsett Pond.

This aerial photo was taken in August 2015 by Halifax Police Chief Ted Broderick. A thick mat of blue-green algae covers much of West Monponsett Pond.

 

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

HALIFAX, Mass.

For more than a decade, blue-green algae blooms in West Monponsett Pond have often ended summer fun early and rendered the boat ramp useless. Local residents are regularly cautioned about using the pond, because of harmful health effects linked to cyanobacteria. The  Halifax Fire Department routinely receives calls about gas odors. The stink is inevitably traced to an abundance of algae triggered by nutrient overloading.

For the past eight years the Massachusetts Department of Public Health has been regularly testing West Monponsett Pond’s summer water quality, but the situation was recognized long before that. The problems and fixes are complicated.

A July 1987 report found increasing aquatic-weed growth, nutrient pollution from septic-system leachate, siltation from solids carried in by storm drains and fecal contamination in both East and West Monponsett ponds. The ponds, part of the Taunton River watershed, are separated by Route 58, a 30-mile, south-north highway in southeastern Massachusetts.

Three decades later, the same problems — failed septic systems, stormwater runoff carrying lawn and agricultural fertilizers and animal waste, and phosphorous from bog operations — are causing water-quality impairment and leading to destructive algae blooms. The problem also has been exacerbated by increased development around both ponds during the past 30 years.

The pumping of Silver Lake and other area waterbodies to meet Brockton’s water needs is also impacting the water quality of these two ponds.

Significant levels of these pollutants continue to cause algal blooms that have closed beaches and caused fish kills. Algal blooms with results as high as 1,900,000 cells per milliliter have been discovered; a threshold of 70,000 is enough to close a beach.

Cyanobacteria advisories for West Monponsett Pond have become the norm. These outbreaks are even obvious to untrained eyes, as thick mats of algae choke the pond and color the water pea-soup green.

Since 2008 the Massachusetts Department of Public Health has issued multiple public-health advisories for the pond, forcing the town to close the beaches to swimming and boating. In 2013, the Monponsett Ponds held the record of longest consecutive beach closures in state history, according to a 2016 report.

“The stagnant waters in the ponds combined with the warm water temperatures and high nutrient content make them very susceptible to cyanobacteria toxin blooms,” according to the report titled “West Monponsett Pond Nutrient Management Project.” “Cyanobacteria blooms in the pond have resulted in multiple beach closures and serious health concerns.”

Swallowing water contaminated by blue-green algae guarantees major digestive discomfort. Children can become ill, and pets can die from ingesting it. Cyanobacteria also can cause skin rashes, hives and blisters, and inhaling droplets of it can cause sore throats, sinus and ear infections.

Earlier this month, the town of Halifax hired SOLitude Lake Management to dose West Monponsett Pond with a solution of aluminum sulfate. Aluminum sulfate binds with phosphorous, one of the nutrients, along with nitrogen, that helps algae to thrive. By making the phosphorous unavailable as a nutrient, algae growth is reduced.

Local officials had long wanted to treat the stressed pond with aluminum sulfate, but the presence of an endangered mussel and dragonfly larvae delayed that route until the state Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program approved the plan.

This month’s treatment was done to improve the pond’s water quality with the hope that it will be open for more days this spring and summer for recreational uses including boating, swimming and fishing, according to Halifax town Administrator Charlie Seelig. The treatment program ended June 14.

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

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Frank Carini: Energy-sector sprawl raises concerns in southern New England

By FRANK CARINI for ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Meeting rising energy demand while minimizing the climate impact is a widely recognized, although often ignored, issue. But there’s an additional challenge that warrants attention: the land-use implications of the world’s energy demands.

This growing pressure is especially acute in southern New England, where land is at a premium.

Worldwide, during the next two-plus decades, some 200,000 square kilometers of additional land area will be directly impacted by energy development, according to a 2016 study. When spacing requirements are included, another 800,000 square kilometers, an area greater than the size of Texas, will also be impacted to quench the world’s thirst for energy.

Development of new land area required for energy production is, and will likely continue to be, the largest driver of land-use change in the United States for the foreseeable future, according to the report.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration has projected energy produced in the United States will increase 27 percent by 2040, to support both domestic and international demand.

Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island are all feeling crunched for space, and the preferred energy-development areas seem to be forestland and farmland. Forestland in all three states is already being cleared or is in line to be clear-cut to make room for more natural-gas infrastructure.

Fossil fuels, however, aren’t the only form of energy eating up valuable real estate. There’s growing concern that solar- and wind-energy projects will also leave behind environmental scars.

All three states, especially at the statehouse level, routinely rally around energy projects that promise to deliver electricity at the lowest cost. As a result, energy projects are typically directed away from developed land, because it’s cheaper to build from scratch. These open-space projects then inevitably ignore environmental-siting concerns and long-term external costs.

Connecticut’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), for one, is deeply troubled by the region’s rush to take farmland out of production and cut down forest to power overconsumption.

Earlier this year the nine-member council published a report aimed at stimulating the siting of solar-energy facilities in places other than farms and forests. The report, "Energy Sprawl in Connecticut,'' documents the surge in proposals to use farmland and forestland for the construction of large solar electricity-generating facilities.

“We do not see any need for Connecticut’s land conservation and renewable energy goals to be in conflict,” CEQ Chairwoman Susan Merrow said. “We envision a future with ample solar energy, farms, and forests.”

Solar photovoltaic facilities are the largest single type of development consuming agricultural land and forestland in Connecticut. In 2016, the area of farmland and forest selected and/or approved for development of solar facilities nearly equaled the area of such lands preserved by the state in an average year. (CEQ)

The CEQ report analyzed recent state decisions affecting utility-scale solar development, and determined that if all of the projects selected by the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP) in 2016 to supply renewable energy are built, hundreds of acres of farmland and forest would be converted to electricity generation.

The 16-page report recommended legislation to:

Require DEEP to give “meaningful weight” to environmental-siting criteria when selecting renewable-energy projects that supply electricity to Eversource and United Illuminating. Under current laws and policies, DEEP bases its decisions on the price of electricity supplied, which has led to a surge in projects proposed to be built on farmland and forest.

Require utility-scale solar developments to obtain a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need from the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC). Current statutes require the CSC to approve such projects by declaratory ruling, and severely limit what the CSC may consider before approving a project. The certificate, on the other hand, is the approval tool for most facilities regulated by the CSC, from power plants to cell towers, and provides more detailed oversight of siting. In addition, the report urges the legislature to amend the statute to allow the CSC to consider impacts to agricultural land in all its decisions.

The CEQ also has urged DEEP and the Legislature to consider incentives to encourage developers to put their projects on landfills and other developed sites. The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources is pushing a similar incentive program.

“The CEQ is focusing on the legal responsibilities of state agencies to select and approve renewable-energy projects,” Merrow said. “We are not recommending anything that would restrict the rights of landowners.”

Scott Millar, manager of community technical assistance for Grow Smart Rhode Island, said solar panels on rooftops, industrial land, landfills and brownfields would minimize environmental damage. He noted that crash-strapped municipalities would be eager to rent vacant and underused development space to renewable-energy developers.

“We need to take a hard look at what we’re proposing,” the former Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management staffer said. “We shouldn’t be sacrificing farms and forests.”

Grow Smart Rhode Island is particularly concerned about two bills filed in the General Assembly this session — similar to other bills filed during the past several years. Both the Senate and House bill would pave the way for energy-project development on farms and both would take away local siting control. Millar said the bills fail to properly value working farmland.

“Renewable-energy proponents are pushing the bills because they’re anxious to get projects built quickly,” he said. “It’s unprecedented that we would amend zoning to make industrial uses in zoned residential allowable and then place restrictions on cities and towns on how they can manage those uses.”

Some Rhode Island farmers have testified that allowing such projects on their land would help make their operations profitable.

Both bills were held for further study.

While Grow Smart has remained quiet regarding the development of what would be Rhode Island’s largest fossil-fuel power plant, the Clear River Energy Center in the woods of Burrillville, the proposed project may well be the best example of how southern New England is grappling with energy demand.

It’s been estimated that at least 200 acres of forestland would be impacted if the natural-gas power plant is built. The area’s forestland is home to some 165 wildlife species, including the hairy woodpecker, the black-throated green warbler, the wood frog, eastern box turtle, big brown bat and the six-spotted tiger beetle.

These woods, one of the largest remaining untouched forest tracts in Rhode Island, also feature an assortment of vegetation, from eastern hemlock, red maple, and various birch and oak trees to maleberry, blueberry, mountain laurel and witch hazel to cinnamon fern, threeleaf goldthread, northern starflower and peat moss.

To combat the increasing demand for energy, the CEQ report noted that energy-efficient appliances and programs would lessen the demand from all sources, including renewable sources.

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

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Frank Carini: Human overpopulation's assault on the environment

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Lost in the discussion about climate change — at least the snippets of it not drowned out by the air horns of special interests — is the issue of overpopulation, arguably the main reason that  the planet is heating up, the oceans are acidifying and the atmosphere is wheezing.

Our sheer numbers are mostly a threat to, well, ourselves. The planet will recover; we won’t if we fail to take real action. Our most recent response — a full-on assault of women’s reproductive rights — doesn’t leave our children’s children much hope.

Sensing this blatant disregard for their future, a group of 21 kids, in 2015, filed a climate lawsuit against the federal government. It’s moving forward. In the lawsuit, the young plaintiffs have accused the federal government of violating their constitutional rights by knowing about the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels and supporting the development of fossil-fuel production anyway.

The residents of Burrillville, R.I., can relate.

Meanwhile, many of the adults elected to lead us forward act like spoiled brats. In the face of overwhelming scientific proof — never mind common sense — that human activities are changing the climate and punishing the natural resources that sustain us and all other life, they dismiss the importance of family planning and reproductive heath to push ideology.

Tom Price, current secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, hates birth control. As a member of Congress, he voted to terminate the program that subsidizes contraception for low-income women. He voted against a law barring employers from firing women for using contraception. He rages against the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirement that insurance plans cover contraception without a co-pay.

He told ThinkProgress in 2012 that there are no women who struggle to afford birth control and that the ACA’s contraceptive mandate is wrong. “Bring me one woman who has been left behind. Bring me one. There’s not one,” he is quoted. “The fact of the matter is, this is a trampling of religious freedom and religious liberty in this country.”

This widely shared heavenly worldview is helping trample the life out of this planet. It’s a big middle finger to the future.

Consider this staggering fact: human population grew from 1.6 billion to 6.1 billion during the course of the 20th Century, according to the United Nations Population Fund. It took 199,900 years for the population to reach 1.6 billion, and then, in a blink of a century, 4.5 billion more people were added.

The worldwide population, now at 7.4 billion, is projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. We need intelligent conversations — not intelligent design — about our population, to eschew escalating wars fought over natural resources and to avoid increased pain and suffering.

Human activity is causing the greatest mass extinction of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, at rates of 1,000 to 10,000 faster than normal. (Center for Biological Diversity)

Climate change, or if you prefer the label global warming, is really just about numbers — ours. It’s a simple math problem. But the issue of human population is never debated during presidential campaigns or discussed by cable TV’s talking heads.

Population, climate change and consumption are inextricably linked in their collective global environmental impact, according to the Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment Program.

The Worldwatch Institute says the two overriding challenges facing mankind are to mitigate climate change and slow population growth.

“Success on these two fronts would make other challenges, such as reversing the deforestation of Earth, stabilizing water tables, and protecting plant and animal diversity, much more manageable,” according to the Washington, D.C.-based organization. “If we cannot stabilize climate and we cannot stabilize population, there is not an ecosystem on Earth that we can save.”

Addressing these two interconnected issues starts with improving the health of women and children, especially in developing nations. By reducing poverty and infant mortality, increasing female access to human rights, such as economic opportunity, education and health care — funding that the White House wants to cut because some of the organizations helping to improve the lives of poor women and girls also provide abortions — educating women about birth-control options and ensuring access to family planning services, women worldwide would have stronger voices.

Knowledge, after all, is power, but we seem determined to curtail education, as we relentlessly attack climate science and evolution, and spout rubbish about the Environmental Protection Agency generating “propaganda” and “brainwashing” children.

If he isn’t already, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.., should be named as a defendant in the kids’ climate lawsuit. The senator who recently spewed that brainwashing garbage received $465,950 from the oil and gas industry during the past five years to help fatten his campaign coffers.

Humans continue the geo-engineering of the natural world to sustain our unsustainable numbers. The bough will eventually break.

More than two centuries ago, English scholar Thomas Malthus published ''An Essay on the Principle of Population''. In his writing he noted that human population tends to grow geometrically, while the resources available to support it tend to grow arithmetically. Under these conditions, he wrote that human population will inevitably outgrow the supply of food. He predicted that population growth would lead to degradation of the land, and eventually massive famine, disease and war.

Improvements in agriculture and the Industrial Revolution postponed the disaster Malthus thought was imminent, although much of what he predicted as happened, just not in one fell swoop.

Now, 219 years later, can we again tech our way out of the numerous impacts our rapidly growing population has and will create?

If so, it will likely come at the cost of diversity, and a considerable price has already been extracted. It also will likely expand the already-too-wide gap that separates the wealthy from the poor.

Simply discussing the issue of population is taboo, and many of the conversations that are held inevitably veer toward population control and China’s since-lax one-child policy.

Ignoring the problem won’t solve it. We need to have grown-up discussions about reproductive health. We need to address public health and population at all levels of government. After all, humans are the main force behind environmental pollution.

In the United States, at least, these vital conversations are muted by politicians who clap their tiny hands and get all giddy about rolling back laws enacted to protect public health and the environment. God forbid if the words “penis” or “vagina” are mentioned in a classroom.

A voluntary family-planning program in Iran helped drop the highest rate of population growth in the country’s history to replacement level a year faster than China’s compulsory one-child policy. The program subsidizes vasectomies, offers free condoms and affordable contraceptives, and supports countrywide education on sexual health and family planning.

Iran’s collection of spoiled brats, which, like here, consists mainly of older, whiny men, wants to defund the program.

It seems the “leaders” of these two countries have more in common than they know.

Frank Carini is the editor of ecoRI News.

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Frank Carini: The horrific effects of plastic pollution

The remains of this Laysan albatross chick on Midway Island in the Pacific show the plastic it ingested before death, including a bottle cap and lighter.

The remains of this Laysan albatross chick on Midway Island in the Pacific show the plastic it ingested before death, including a bottle cap and lighter.

 

The amount of plastic choking the planet, most notably the world’s oceans, is unfathomable. The evidence of this unrelenting assault overwhelming. The scale of this toxic pollution horrifying.

Consider:

It’s estimated that there are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean, from 269,000 tons afloat on the surface to some 4 billion plastic microfibers per square kilometer in the deep sea.

Plastic bags break up into smaller pieces, but their footprint never vanishes. If they do break down, it’s into polymers and toxic chemicals. Some 500 billion single-use plastic bags are used annually worldwide. If you joined them end to end, these petroleum pouches would circumnavigate the globe 4,200 times. Only a minuscule fraction are recycled or reused.

Twenty-five billion Styrofoam cups are thrown out annually in the United States alone.

A single tube of facial scrub can contain more than 330,000 plastic microbeads. A single microbead can be a million times more toxic than the water around it.

Nearly 3 million plastic bottles, every hour of every day, are used in the United States. Less than 30 percent are recycled.

More than 300 million plastic straws are used every day in the United States. Straws are too small to be easily recycled, so they typically become trash. Plastic straws are one of the top beach polluters worldwide.

Eight million tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans every year.

About 100,000 marine creatures die every year from plastic entanglement.

About a million sea birds are killed every year by plastic. A record 276 pieces of plastic where found in one dead bird. It was 90 days old.

At least two-thirds of the world’s fish stocks are suffering from plastic ingestion.

A 2016 study warns that there will be more waste plastic, by weight, in the ocean than fish by 2050, unless humans clean up their act.

“We’ve plasticized the entire biosphere, including our bodies,” said Marcus Eriksen, research director and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute. “The impact of plastic is widespread, and it’s destroying the oceans.”

Eriksen was one of four guests who spoke March 4 at Brown University during a panel discussion titled “The Plastic Ocean.” The discussion also featured photographer Chris Jordan, Georgia State University professor Pam Longobardi and author Carl Safina.

In January, ecoRI News hosted a screening of A Plastic Ocean at the Cable Car Cinema, in Providence. Both events highlighted a serious problem.

Plastics production has increased twenty-fold since 1964, according to last year’s The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics study. Production is expected to double again in the next 20 years, and almost quadruple by 2050.

The world’s plastic problem was first identified in the 1970s. In 1987, a law was eventually passed to restrict the dumping of plastics into the ocean. The Marine Plastic Pollution Research and Control Act went into effect Dec. 31, 1988, making it illegal for any U.S. vessel or land-based operation to dispose of plastics in the ocean.

However, this act and other laws like it, such as the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, can’t compete with mass consumption and throwaway societies.

In 2000, Eriksen traveled to Midway Atoll — a 2.4-square-mile island roughly equidistant between North America and Asia — where he found hundreds of dead Laysan albatross with plastic-filled stomachs. The visit narrowed Eriksen’s environmental focus, and led to the creation of his Los Angeles-based nonprofit that empowers action against the global health crisis of plastic pollution through science, art, education and adventure.

More than 600 animal species are impacted by plastic, through ingestion or entanglement, both of which can sicken or kill them, according to the 5 Gyres Institute. Birds, fish, turtles, dolphins, sharks and whales can be poisoned or trapped by plastic waste.

“There’s pieces of plastic out there with shark bites, turtle bites,” said Eriksen, noting that smaller pieces of plastic can be found everywhere in the world’s oceans. “The world is covered by microplastic particles. The fact we can find plastic in the middle of the ocean is a tragedy of the commons.”

Photographer Chris Jordan followed Eriksen to Midway Atoll. He has visited the far-flung island in the North Pacific Ocean several times. His photographs have vividly captured the destruction caused by plastic. The experience was soul-crushing.

Jordan, the first speaker at the recent panel discussion, introduced himself this way: “I’m the guy who took the horrible photos of the birds with plastic in their stomachs.”

As the Seattle-based photographer shot pictures and videos of plastic-ridden bird carcasses, he found himself sobbing. “Being with dying birds and seeing their suffering ... I felt the grief,” he said. “I never knew how much I cared about these animals.”

“We could be living in such a different way,” Jordan said. “There’s nothing standing in the way of radical change in global behavior. Science is telling us that we need this change.”

Pam Longobardi with some of the plastic she has collected from beaches around the world during the past 10 years. She makes art with some of it, to raise awareness of the world’s plastic problem, archives some of it and recycles as much of it as she can. (Drifters Project)

In 2006, after discovering mountains of plastic on remote Hawaiian shores, Pam Longobardi founded the Drifters Project. During the past decade, the nonprofit has removed tens of thousands of pounds of debris, mostly plastic, from the natural environment and reused the material as communicative social sculpture, to create awareness of the problem.

“The ocean ecosystem is full of life ... and it’s in trouble,” Longobardi told those gathered in the Brown University auditorium. “The ocean is vomiting plastic because it’s full.”

She called plastic a crime against nature, and noted that all this pollution is creating an environmental and racial crisis.

“Plastic comes back to haunt us,” she said. “It’s the ghost of our consumption.”

Longobardi has led “forensic beach cleanings” around the globe, from emptying plastic-filled caves on Kefalonia, an island in the Ionian Sea, west of mainland Greece, to scrubbing beaches in Hawaii. She’s currently running a project in Lesbos, a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey.

Change is possible, and the four speakers noted that, despite the best efforts of lobbying groups such as the American Chemistry Council, a tipping point is fast approaching.

For instance, applying circular economy principles to global plastic packaging flows could transform the plastics economy and drastically reduce negative externalities such as leakage into oceans, according to the 2016 report by the World Economic Forum and Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

“Why are we packing yogurt that lasts three weeks into containers that last forever?” Eriksen asked.

Individual behaviors are also changing.

“When I see a piece of plastic, I pick it up,” Longobardi said. “I know it won’t be consumed by a bird or animal.”

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News, where this first ran.

 

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Frank Carini: Painting over the damage done by shore slobs

 

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Mike Pellini doesn’t get down to the seaside home his grandfather built in 1940 as much as the Massachusetts resident would like. When he does, however, he’s increasingly spending his time removing graffiti from coastal rocks and cleaning up after others.

“It’s so disheartening that people do this to such a beautiful place,” the Shrewsbury, Mass., resident said. “It’s disgusting and a huge problem, and the state doesn’t seem to care.”

“Do this” refers to those who spray-paint shoreline rocks with obscenities, leave behind beer cans, beer bottles and cigarette butts after a night of drinking, and generally trash Scarborough Beach and the Black Point recreation area.

Pellini, 52, said this type of thoughtless behavior has marred the area for as long as he can remember. He has spoken with employees from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) and the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) about the problem, to no avail.

“I’m always told we don’t have the resources ... no budget ... too expensive to clean the rocks,” Pellini said. “It’s so frustrating.”

The cleanup is instead left to people such as Pellini, Camilla Lee, Marianne Kittredge Chronley, and Holley and Ted Flagg. For the past three years or so, they have been cleaning up after the partiers. They pick up marine debris such as plastic bags, plastic bottles and Styrofoam cups. Holley, an artist who paints local nature scenes, mixes paints — donated by Jerry’s Paint and Hardware on Point Judith Road — to match the color of the defaced rocks.

Creating the right color, painting the rocks — Pellini, who is slightly younger than the others in the clean-up group, handles the painting of the harder-to-get-to rocks — and hauling out other people’s trash takes time and effort.

“It’s crazy the state doesn’t do anything about this,” Pellini said. “Rhode Island has this wonderful resource and the state allows it to be trashed.”

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

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Bleached out clams

By FRANK CARINI, for ecoRI news (ecori.org)

NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — Dan Briggs is afraid he’s losing his job. That explains his angry posts to social media this summer. His venting, however, isn’t doing anything to solve the problem, but at least his boss doesn’t mind.

For the past 20 years, the South Kingstown resident has run a one-man commercial operation that sells streamers — dug by hand, with help from a short rake — from tidal areas throughout Narragansett Bay. The soft-shell clams he’s digging up now — far fewer than he was a dozen years ago — often don’t look right, at least when it comes to the color of their shells. He stopped eating his own catch several years ago.

“I know this is bad advertising for my business, but I want the bay cleaned up,” said Briggs, who comes from a long line of quahoggers and diggers. “I just want a cleaner bay, a better protected bay, so I can keep my job and sell high-quality shellfish. But we don’t care about cleaning up spots; we just cover our asses and close them to shellfishing.”

ecoRI News recently spent a Saturday morning with the frustrated fisherman. We meet him at Bissel Cove, which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, was an impaired waterbody in 2014, 2012 and 2010 when it came to shellfish consumption. Rhode Island’s 2014 list of impaired waters also noted that Bissel Cove didn't support the consumption of shellfish, because of the presence of fecal coliform.

Briggs took us to two spots that he said once supported plenty of steamers. Today, both locations — Fox Island, a short boat ride from the shore of Bissel Cove, and the western shore of Jamestown — are largely graveyards for bleached clam shells.

Our guide blames the discoloration of the shells — and his dying livelihood — on the amount of chlorine being used at wastewater treatment plants to kill pathogens. He doesn’t buy the argument that the ultraviolet systems used at these facilities to remove chlorine before the treated effluent is released into Narragansett Bay is adequately addressing the accumulation of this element in the Ocean State’s most important natural resource. His eyes, and years of shellfishing experience, tell him something is wrong.

“We can’t continue to treat the bay like everyone’s private leach field,” Briggs said. “We’re dumping too much chlorine into the bay.”

The use of chlorine is reducing the amount of bacteria in Narragansett Bay, but Briggs believes the buildup of this element is having unintended and overlooked consequences. “Do you want to eat a bleached-out white clam?” he asked.

Chlorine at concentrations to bleach shells would be toxic to bivalves, according to scientists and researchers ecoRI News contacted after our late-July visit with Briggs. It's doubtful, they said, that that much chlorine was being released into Narragansett Bay, because of dechlorination procedures being conducted at wastewater treatment facilities to comply with the Clean Water Act.

Michael Rice, Ph.D., professor of fisheries and aquaculture in the Department of Fisheries, Animal & Veterinary Science at the University of Rhode Island, said the bleaching phenomenon in many species of clams can be caused by acidic bottom conditions, mostly in coves, brought about by summer decomposition of organic material that builds up during colder months.

"Microbial decomposition converts the organic sediments to carbon dioxide that causes local areas of low pH (acidic conditions) that erode the outer layers of the shells leaving chalky white surfaces," he wrote in an e-mail to ecoRI News. "Quahogs coming out of Greenwich Cove look like this often. The bad side of this is that steamers are less tolerant of these types of conditions than the quahogs that have a thicker shell."

Marta Gomez-Chiarri, Ph.D., chairwoman of URI's Department of Fisheries, Animal & Veterinary Science, said biogeochemical reactions may lead to conditions in sediments that can lead to the bleaching of shells.

"Of course, these are all hypothesis, and I don’t know of anybody that has tested them rigorously or done any measurements in the field to check if chlorine is present in areas where the bleaching occurs," she wrote in an e-mail. "This is a great question for researchers, and something that fishermen (not only clam diggers, but also lobstermen) have been interested in having scientists study."

Briggs, a longtime shellfisherman, often finds more dead shells than live steamers after flipping a section of a tidal area.

On the Jamestown, R.I., shore, Briggs flipped a dozen or so spots, typically finding more dead shells than live steamers. On one flip, he counted 14 dead and just three alive. The shells of both featured a lot of white. He noted that the percentage of dead steamers to live ones is disturbing.

“There’s nothing but dead shell here,” Briggs said. “No babies tells me there’s nothing here. Something is killing them.”

Ribbon worms alone can’t be held responsible, but David Gregg, Ph.D., executive director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey, said research shows steamers are being affected by green crabs.

On the banks of Fox Island a little later, nearly a dozen more flips with his short rake exposed an even bleaker picture. Briggs uncovered only a handful of live steamers, but plenty of whitewashed dead shells. He said the same picture exists in once-fertile spots around the Jamestown and Newport bridges and along Prudence Island.

“Chlorine is killing them,” Briggs said. “There must be other ways to treat our sewage than dump it in the bay. I’m not a scientist, but there must be a better way to collect and treat our sewage.”

Chlorine is widely used as a disinfectant for sewage treatment plant effluent and to treat combined sewer overflow discharges. Chlorine can cause environmental harm at low levels, and is especially harmful to organisms that live in water. It combines with inorganic material in water to form chloride salts, and with organic material in water to form chlorinated organic chemicals.

The impact of chlorine use in wastewater treatment facilities on shellfish health, however, is largely unknown, as little research has been conducted, anywhere.

"I’m sure chlorine in effluent does bad things but bleaching steamers white isn’t one of them," Gregg wrote in an e-mail.

He also noted that chalky shells "are more likely a symptom of ocean acidification caused by too much carbon dioxide in the air from burning fossil fuels." Gregg said he couldn't confirm that Narragansett Bay is more acidic now than before, but noted that chalky shells "is what I would think it could look like."

Briggs is one of the last remaining shellfishermen dry digging for steamers in Narragansett Bay tidal areas. His income dropped by $15,000 last year, despite working 300 days in 2015. A typical day means flipping some 200 square feet of coastline. He’s having a harder time filling his tall white buckets with steamers, which he currently sells for $4.50 a pound wholesale.

Briggs said state and local officials can’t just blame the disappearance of steamers — and other marine species — on overdigging or overfishing.

“We’re polluting the bay with chlorine and poop,” he said. “All the regulations, all the paperwork, are on us. We just can’t hide all this sludge in the bay. I love my job. That’s why I’m complaining.”

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Frank Carini: Answers to global-warming deniers and minimizers

Well-documented facts, and common sense, tell us how humans are affecting the world, often with negative consequences. For example, greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, which we generate in abundance, are altering the climate, changing ocean chemistry and helping the seas rise.

Since ecoRI News first went online, in September 2009, people skeptical of manmade global warming — also referred to as climate change — have asked and e-mailed us, in most cases politely, to prove what most climate scientists already have. The following are the three most popular questions, presented in various forms, we have been asked in the past six-plus years:

Melting glaciers are often cited as proof of climate change. Given that they have been retreating for thousands years, why is their continued withdrawal, or even disappearance, of concern?

The obvious answer, at least to us, is that humans have built a lot of stuff, much of it highly valued, along the shore. In Newport, R.I., for instance, 968 historic structures are threatened by rising seas.

Whether you want to believe that belching smokestacks and tailpipes, deforestation and industrial agriculture, among many other human practices, have played a role in altering the planet’s climate, the fact is the world’s oceans have risen by an average of nearly 8 inches since the beginning of the 20th Century. They are projected to rise another 3-7 feet by 2100.

Even if you believe  that Earth’s rising waters are part of a natural cycle, or your god’s will, the fact we have replaced natural coastal buffers, such as salt marshes and wetlands, with homes, roads, restaurants and tourist attractions has made our developed shorelines vulnerable to storm surge, flooding and erosion.

Now, southern New England’s coast is rebuilding itself, and humans weren’t invited to submit plans.

Besides contributing to global sea-level rise, fresh water from melting glaciers alters the sea, pushing down heavier salt water and changing ocean currents. The impacts ripple far and wide. Weather patterns change. Fish migrations change. Species go extinct. Temperatures rise, because the white surfaces of glaciers — they cover 10 percent of the Earth’s land — reflect the sun’s rays, helping to maintain the climate humans have become so accustomed to.

If even climate scientists are wrong — although my money’s on the science — lessening our dependence on the burning of fossil fuels would still improve public health and the environment’s well-being. No one would get hurt or suffer. A reconfigured energy industry would still provide plenty of employment opportunities. Plus, I’m sure the new-look industry could also be rigged to benefit the few over the many.

Of course, if the deniers are wrong, and we do nothing or not enough, it will prove costly on so many levels.

Environmentalists treat ecosystems as if they never change, attempting to preserve the same environment with which they grew up or trying to restore their vision of what the environment may have been like prior to industrialization and large-scale agriculture. But don’t ecosystems change all the time?

The often-used argument that the environment-was-going-to-change-naturally-and-species-were-going-to-go-extinct-regardless rings oh so hollow — kind of like a murderer defending himself by saying his victim was going to die eventually anyway.

Just because ecosystems change and species disappear without the help of human hands, doesn’t mean we have carte blanche to ruin environments for profit and sport. We share this sphere with many living things, and we have an obligation to future generations.

I, for one, would have enjoyed seeing a flight of passenger pigeons darken an afternoon sky. Sadly, the last one of its kind died in a zoo in 1914. We hunted them to extinction. Let’s hope we don’t make the same mistake with grizzly bears, wolves and African elephants.

The climate has changed many times in the past, so why is it a problem now?

The climate reacts to whatever forces it to change, and 7-plus billion humans — a population that is growing rapidly — are now the dominant force. It’s really no different than how an overpopulation of deer would stress a forest ecosystem. Neither species seems to be able to confront this reality.

Humans are stressing the plant’s resources through a combination of manmade pollution and ceaseless development. The negative impacts of our growth far outweigh the positives. Mother Nature will respond in kind. Why do you think we're looking to colonize Mars?

Frank Carini is the editor of ecoRI News.

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Frank Carini: Mass. author traces personal history to discover America

Lauret Savoy signing books at the Providence Athenaeum.

via ecori.org

Not far from the building where she teaches environmental studies and geology at Mount Holyoke College, Lauret Savoy once had these three hurtful words yelled at her as she attempted to cross a busy crosswalk: “Nigger, go home.”

It’s not uncommon, even today, for Savoy, a woman of mixed heritage, and other people of color to be on the receiving end of similar words of hate in the neighborhood that surrounds this liberal-arts college in South Hadley, Mass. That doesn’t make this western Massachusetts town unique.

Born in the early 1960s, Savoy grew up knowing racism, even if she didn’t recognize it as a young girl. During a recent discussion about her latest book, held at the Providence Athenaeum, she shared a story, long ago burned into memory, from her childhood.

When she was 7, Savoy’s family moved across the country, from California to Washington, D.C. Along the way, the young girl collected postcards to document her adventure. At one particular stop, Savoy recalled taking her “selected treasures to the cashier.” The cashier ignored her until there was no one else to be helped. When the 7-year-old reached out to pay, the cashier made sure not to touch the tiny, brown hand.

“When you experience racism, contempt, as a 7-year-old, you don’t know what it really means,” Savoy said. “But your foundation is rattled.”

Her new book, Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape, is a response to her foundation being rattled. The book traces her Native-, African- and Euro-American ancestry across the United States in the hope of learning what her extended family experienced.

Savoy’s father, a “fair-skinned” man who died when she was young, introduced her to few relatives and spoke little about growing up in a segregated city. Her mother, a “dark-skinned” woman, was reluctant to share information about her experiences working as an Army nurse during World War II.

“I grew up not knowing where my parents came from or about the generations before them,” Savoy said. “I wanted to find my home. I needed to know, or I would continue to feel the emptiness I grew up with.”

The Leverett, Mass., resident is a self-described “Earth historian” who enjoys investigating the contours of the land to examine how the past helped shape the present. “Trace” combines cultural history, Savoy’s personal history and geography to tell a story about race in the United States. The book explores the way landscapes feature both broad national dialogue and voices that have been silenced by dominant culture.

Savoy said the book helped her answer questions that had “haunted me over time.” “We have quite a searing national history, and that past lives with us still,” she said.

During the March 11 discussion of “Trace,” Savoy read, beautifully, from a few chapters. She recounted the checkered history of Washington, D.C., reminding the packed room in the Providence Athenaeum that the country’s first president chose a location for the nation’s capital that would perpetuate slavery. For many years, she noted, a slave market was a common sight in the political center of this new “land of the free.”

“Washington wanted the capital near his plantation in Virginia,” said Savoy, noting that the White House was built on a tobacco plantation. “It had to be where slavery remained unmolested.”

She spoke about the things her childhood textbooks taught her about America — Native Americans, although in her books they were called Indians, for example, were useless, and blacks were once slaves. As a child, she wondered, “Will I be a slave?”

After the race riots of 1968, Savoy, then a young girl, wondered, “Should I also hate?”

Savoy noted that before 1963 the names of some 200 places in the United States contained the word “nigger.” The offensive name still lingers in places today — for example, the family hunting camp of Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas who ran for president in 2012 and 2016, is called “Niggerhead.” Visit the U.S. Bureau of Geographic Names Web site to find others.

Christina Bevilacqua, the Providence Athenaeum’s director of public engagement, bought “Trace” on a whim during a visit to New York City in December. She described Savoy’s book as a memoir, an explication of geographical history of the American landscape, and a personal excavation of the histories that have been erased from that landscape. She said it’s written by a geologist, but reads like something written by a poet.

After reading it, she reached out to Savoy to ask her to speak at the Athenaeum.

“I was especially happy to be able to present Lauret in our lineup ... she’s writing about a dimension of the national conversation on race that I haven't seen in any of the many incisive books and articles examining this national moment, namely the way that the history of race can be literally traced in the land,” Bevilacqua told the audience. “By the end of the book, I was seeing the world around me in a different way.”

A teacher, earth scientist, writer, photographer and pilot, Savoy’s courses at Mount Holyoke College explore the stories told of the American land’s origins, and the stories told of people on this land. The author of several other books, Savoy is a past winner of Mount Holyoke College’s Distinguished Teaching Award, has held fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University, and is a fellow of the Geological Society of America.

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

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Frank Carini: Something fishy about climate change

 Atlantic cod caught off New England.

 

Atlantic cod caught off New England.

 

Via ecoRI News

For generations winter flounder was one of the most important fish in southern New England waters. Today, the once-abundant flatfish is hard to find off the coasts of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Overfishing is often blamed, and the industry certainly bears much responsibility, as does consumer demand. The winter flounder commercial fishery was once a highly productive industry with annual harvests up to 40.3 million pounds, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Since the early 1980s, however, landings have steadily declined. Total commercial landings for all stocks combined — Georges Bank, Gulf of Maine and Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic — dipped to 3.5 million pounds in 2010, according to the Virginia-based organization.

Overfishing, however, is just one factor in the decline of some once-prevalent species in local waters. The reasons are complicated and diverse, from habitat loss, pollution, and even energy production — the Brayton Point Power Station, in Somerset, Mass., pre-cooling towers, played a role in the precipitous decline of winter flounder in Mount Hope Bay — to climate-change impacts such warming water temperatures, shifting currents and less oxygenated waters.

In fact, one of the biggest current threats to domestic fisheries, including those along the southern New England coast, is the impact a changing climate, combined with land-based pollution, is having on water quality.

“When water is polluted, it exacerbates the threats posed by algal blooms and disease,” said John Torgan, director of ocean and coastal conservation for The Nature Conservancy’s Rhode Island chapter. “Our coastal edges and estuaries inoculate the ocean from threats. Our coastal ponds and rivers are breeding grounds for marine life. If we reduce the amount of pollution in our waters, they’ll be able to better cope with whatever challenges climate change brings. The best investment we can make is to address the sources of land-based pollution.”

The former Narragansett baykeeper for Save The Bay said that effort must continue to focus on reducing the amount of nitrogen dumped into local waters from wastewater treatment facilities, septic systems and cesspools. He also noted the importance of rebuilding natural buffering along the coast, and better protecting wetlands.

However, the technology required to remove nitrogen from wastewater treatment plants and septic systems is expensive. In fact, very few wastewater treatment facilities in southern New England possess it. A de-nitrification septic system for a home or building can cost upwards of $40,000, but Torgan noted that one system could serve a number of structures. He said reducing the amount of nitrogen in local waters is an investment the region must make.

“Water quality and the ecological health of our coastal waters and estuaries are the most important drivers for environmental and community well-being in coastal states,” Torgan said. “Clean, healthy coastal waters are the key to environmental protections, public health and tourism. Can you swim? Can you take fish?”

Tepid waters


Southern New England’s coastal waters are warming, and key species are disappearing (cod and winter flounder), southerly species are appearing more frequently (spot and ocean sunfish) and more unwanted guests are arriving (jellyfish that have an appetite for fish larvae and, in the summer, lionfish, a venomous and fast-reproducing fish with a voracious appetite).

This biomass metamorphosis will likely transform southern New England’s fishing industry, for both better and worse. But how much of this change is climate related and how much is simply the region’s natural ebb and flow of marine life? A lack of ecosystem-wide data makes that a difficult question to answer. But change is being witnessed and documented.

“Climate change has happened in southern New England’s coastal waters,” Torgan said. “We’ve seen a significant warming on average in water temperatures, especially winter water temperatures. Southern New England’s ocean waters have changed, and this warming triggers fish kills, hypoxia and die-offs."

In 2012, water temperatures off the New England coast hit a record high, and shifts were observed in the distribution of Atlantic cod, a cold-water species, according to a 2013 study. While the region’s biomass diversity is certainly being altered by warming temperatures, species populations also are being changed by prey-to-predator ratios and by overfishing in waters hundreds of miles away.

Jon Hare, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Narragansett Laboratory, told ecoRI News that fishing pressures and climate change are the two obvious factors when it comes to changing population distributions.

“Whether it’s climate change or fishing pressures, species distribution is changing and we need to adapt how we manage that change,” Hare said.

Climate change, however, is perhaps the least understood factor. Both scientists and fishermen are just beginning to understand the possible ramifications. For instance, despite ongoing, but so far fairly limited, research it remains unclear how different species will adapt to warming waters, shifting currents and other climate-change impacts.

Species native to southern New England marine waters, such as cod, lobster and winter flounder, which the region’s fishing industry built its fleet around, will either adapt, find more suitable habitat elsewhere or their numbers will decline.

“Numerous studies have now documented changes in species distributions related to climate change,” Hare has written in research papers. “In general, species are moving poleward and into deeper waters. However, it is important to recognize that this is a general pattern and that there are a substantial number of exceptions.”

Winter flounder, which have distinct habitat needs and migrate to estuaries to spawn, may be unable to shift their populations, as warmer-water species such as black sea bass and butterfish move into the void left by the migration of cold-water species northward and/or further offshore.

 

Challenges and opportunities


Sarah Schumann, president and founder of the Warwick, R.I.-based nonprofit Eating with the Ecosystem, said local fishermen are seeing an influx of black sea bass, and it’s northern expansion is putting native species, such as lobster, at risk.

Black sea bass historically have been found between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras, N.C., where they are sought both commercially and recreationally and are subject to size restrictions and rigid quotas. However, their numbers here are increasing and they are now being found in the colder waters of the Gulf of Maine, which isn’t quite as chilly as it once was. In fact, according to a 2015 study, warming waters are a major factor in the Gulf of Maine's cod collapse.

The greater abundance and distribution shifts of black sea bass will have environmental impacts and economic implications — both good and bad.

“The predatory impact of this explosion of black sea bass will be significant. They eat lobsters and shellfish,” Schumann said. “Their quota is pretty small, so there’s time and effort associated with catching them by accident and throwing them back. They also get caught up in fishing gear. That’s money lost for fishermen.”

On the flip side, Schumann noted that the increased range of these spiky-finned fish opens up a possible fishery to New England fishermen. “This shift northward of black sea bass will hopefully bring new opportunities, but it also will bring new challenges,” she said.

The change in black sea bass population density and increased range doesn’t automatically mean a changing climate is the reason, according to Schumann, other fishermen and scientists.

Populations shift and change all the time. It’s difficult to spot trends without more significant data sets. For example, there is plenty of data on surface-water temperatures but very little on bottom-water temperatures.

Also, the appearance of southern, warmer-water species off the New England coast isn’t an uncommon occurrence. Atlantic garfish, torpedo rays and cobia, to name just a few, have been randomly appearing here for decades.

However, that doesn’t mean warming waters and shifting currents, being caused in large part by manmade greenhouse-gas emissions, aren’t reshaping southern New England’s fisheries.

“Climate change is happening and we need to deal with it,” Hare said. “Fishermen are seeing the changes every day. They’re used to seeing fluctuations in species from fishing impacts, habitat destruction and a large number of negative impacts, but climate change is having an impact.”

Summer flounder and blue crabs — both of which spawn offshore and are less dependent on specific habitat needs — will likely expand their range because of climate change. In fact, fishermen and scientists here are already seeing blue crabs, a more southerly species, in greater numbers. Summer flounder offshore spawning stock is moving up the East Coast, as coastal waters here become less New England like and more Mid-Atlantic like.

That’s not to say southern New England hasn’t witnessed the return of some classics. Torgan noted that cod, for the first time in years, are biting off Block Island. He also said the region’s Atlantic herring population is doing well.

The combination of a changing climate and nitrogen pollution is destroying lobster habitat, meaning the population of this popular species is declining in southern New England. (istock)

Lobsters leaving
Southern New England’s lobster population has declined sharply since the late 1990s. The reasons are varied — for example, dredged material from marinas dumped off Prudence Island destroyed lobster habitat, and some believe pesticide use has contributed to the decline — but warming waters are likely shifting these bottom-dwelling crustaceans offshore and to the north.

In fact, last summer, a report by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission attributed southern New England’s lobster decline to climate change.

“Since the American lobster is highly influenced by temperature, climate change is expected to significantly impact the life history and distribution of the species,” according to the 493-page report. “In the lobster’s southern range, the number of days above 20º C (68 degrees Fahrenheit) is increasing, threatening successful reproduction. Contrastingly, in the Gulf of Maine, the number of days in the ideal range of 12-18º C is increasing, providing a potential benefit to the species. Climate changes are important to monitor and provide a strong justification for the timing of this benchmark stock assessment.”

Warmer water temperatures also can influence lobster vulnerability to disease and reduce their growth rate — a bad combination for the species and for those who make their livelihood catching the popular seafood.

“Lobsters are moving offshore into deeper waters, and it seems to be connected to warming waters,” said Eating with the Ecosystem's Schumann. “But we don’t have data on bottom-water temperatures, so it’s difficult to say that’s the main reason. It’s a complex issue.”

The Nature Conservancy’s Torgan said climate change and pollution, most notably excess nitrogen, are conspiring to destroy lobster habitat.

“We’re losing lobster habitat,” he said. “They’re not dying; they’re numbers are declining because their habitat is.”

Climate change is impacting, and will continue to impact, southern New England’s marine waters. But how fast and in what way is still anyone’s guess. These unknown climate-change impacts pose a challenge for both scientists and fishermen.

With the decline of cod, winter flounder and yellowtail flounder, much of Rhode Island’s groundfish fleet has turned its attention to squid. The Ocean State is now one of the biggest harvesters of squid on the East Coast. Climate change most assuredly played a part in the local loss of those three popular fishery species, but without more data it’s difficult to pinpoint how big a role it’s playing or will play.

But climate change is altering ecosystems, both aquatic and terrestrial. Ocean surface temperatures are expected to increase another 4-8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, according to Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Management Council.

“Even a shift of one to three degrees on average can have a dramatic impact on the life cycle and distribution of southern New England’s classic cold-water species,” Torgan said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean it will kill them, but it makes them more susceptible to disease and predation.”

Warmer waters could also lead to changes in the timing of seasonal plankton blooms, disruption in migration patterns, and the disappearance of species at the southern end of their range, such as lobsters.

The world’s oceans also have been steadily acidifying for the past 250 years, fueled largely by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Acidifying oceans could dramatically impact the world’s squid species, including the population off the southern New England coast that is being harvested in greater numbers by an adapting local fishing industry.

In fact, about half of 36 fish stocks in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, which includes the waters off New England, have been shifting northward during the past four decades, with some stocks nearly disappearing from U.S. waters as they move farther offshore, according to a 2009 NOAA study. Many of them are commercially valuable species.

The study focused on the impact of changing coastal and ocean temperatures on fisheries from Cape Hatteras to the Canadian border. The research looked at annual spring survey data from 1968 to 2007 for stocks ranging from Atlantic cod and haddock to yellowtail and winter flounder, spiny dogfish and Atlantic herring. Researchers found many familiar species are shifting to the north, where ocean waters are cooler, or staying in the same general area but moving into deeper waters.

The study’s co-authors, including Hare, selected the 36 species to study because they were consistently caught in high numbers during annual spring bottom-trawl surveys. They also represented a wide range of species known to be commercially and/or ecologically important.

Ocean temperatures have increased since the 1960s and ’70s, and the authors found significant changes in species distribution consistent with warming in 24 of the 36 stocks studied. Ten of the 36 stocks examined had significant range expansion, while 12 had significant range contraction, according to the study.

The study also found that heavily fished stocks appeared to be more sensitive to climate change. Also, each fish species has a particular temperature range in which it thrives. If water temperatures depart from that range, they may experience reduced growth and reproduction, ultimately reducing their numbers in a particular area and changing the species’ distribution.

It also means fisherman will have to travel farther to catch some species, at least until it’s no longer economical.

These climate change-driven shifts in fisheries pose a threat, or at least a challenge, to the industry. It will require fishermen and regulators — like the fish and shellfish they catch and monitor — to adapt. One possible measure that has been proposed is adjusting fishing seasons and allowable catches based on observed population shifts, such as the growing emergence of black sea bass in southern New England waters.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries scientist Jon Hare carried baskets of fish during the 2006 winter trawl survey along the Northeast continental shelf. This annual survey started in the 1960s and has been instrumental in documenting changes in fish distributions. (NOAA)

Adult-only conversations
While numerous studies have shown that adult marine fish distributions in the Northeast are changing, few studies have looked at the early-life stages of these adult fish.

A 2015 study by NOAA fisheries researchers, including Hare, has provided some answers, finding that distributions of young stages and the timing of the life cycle of many fish species are also changing.

Hare said most marine fish have complex life histories with distinct stages — much like frogs. Marine fish spawn tiny planktonic eggs that move at the whim of ocean currents. Over a period of weeks to months, while drifting in the ocean, larvae develop and grow until they reach a point where they transition into juveniles recognizable as a fish.

The distribution of larvae in the sea is determined by where adult fish reproduce and by currents that move these early-life stages around. In the study published last September, researchers used long-term survey data to compare the distributions of larvae between two decades, 1977-87 and 1999-2008. They also used long-term survey data for the entire Northeast shelf, from Cape Hatteras to Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, to compare distributions of adult fish over the same time periods.

“The distribution and timing of the life cycle of many fish species are changing,” said the study’s lead author, Harvey Walsh, a fisheries biologist at NOAA’s Narragansett Laboratory and a colleague of Hare’s. “The consequences of these changes for fisheries management need to be considered, but an important first step is documenting that change is occurring.”

Walsh and his colleagues found that larval stages of 43 percent of the species studied changed distribution, while adult stages of 50 percent of the species shifted distribution over the same time period. Shifts were predominantly northward or along the shelf for both life stages, which they said is expected given the warming ocean in the region.

But not all the shifts were northward, or along the shelf. Butterfish and Atlantic mackerel, for example, shifted inshore, while red hake and silver hake moved into deeper but more inshore waters in the Gulf of Maine. Adult spiny dogfish, little skate and offshore hake shifted southward, perhaps because of differences in fishing pressures and changes in habitat, according to Walsh.

“It is clear significant changes are underway,” he said. “It is apparent that fish stocks in the Northeast shelf have changed over decades for both larvae and adults. These changes will impact the productivity and distribution of these stocks, and that will have significant implications for their assessment and management.”

Frank Carini is the editor of ecoRI News.

Editor’s note: John Torgan is an ecoRI News board member. Also, the article's author is an Eating with the Ecosystem board member.

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Frank Carini: The selfish slobs of Brown University

 

slobs

Photo  and article by FRANK CARINI, ecoRI News

The trashy scene above recently left behind after the Brown University Class of 2015 graduated perfectly exemplified growing U.S. selfishness.

Kindergartners leave a cafeteria with more grace than the  elite who exited the Main Green by dumping their lunch trays on the ground. It’s sickening how little we think of others and the places we share that it’s considered acceptable to leave behind an easily-avoidable mess for someone else to clean.

After celebrating the accomplishments of young men and women, the  elitists who attended the May 24 graduation left the university lawn littered with half-drunk plastic water bottles, newspapers, commencement programs, half-empty coffee carafes, pieces of lightly bitten fruit and other barely touched foods, and, of course, all things plastic.

The elitists  ignored the many bins, barrels and totes  that Brown University had thoughtfully placed throughout the area to collect trash and recyclables. Plastic crunched underfoot and litter was inadvertently kicked as graduates and their guests slowly left. The workers responsible for folding the chairs and removing the rest of the commencement infrastructure were left to navigate the debris.

It would be nice to think that the  elite kindly left their unwanted food for hungry squirrels, but, sadly, they just thought someone else should pick up their mess. The littering elite couldn’t even be bothered to freshen the trampled lawn with the water they left locked in jettisoned plastic bottles.

There’s little wonder the U.S. recycling rate is a lackluster 35 percent, our composting rate considerably less, consumption is soaring, apathy increasing and our collective concern negligible. Wasted food makes up the largest percentage of all material buried in our landfills. We throw away up to 40 percent of our sustenance, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In fact, the average American wastes 10 times as much food as the average Joe in Southeast Asia — up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s.

Of the more than 150 million mobile devices we discard annually — many still in fine working order but no longer socially fashionable — only about 12 percent are recycled.

A mobile phone contains about 40 elements, including heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants such as flame-retardants, PVC, lead, cadmium, chromium, mercury, bromine, tin and antimony. Such chemicals have been linked to birth defects, impaired learning, liver toxicity, premature births and early puberty.

Our response to this problem has become the American Way. For instance, the United States is the only industrialized country that hasn’t ratified the Basel Convention, an international treaty that makes it illegal to export toxic e-waste. The convention’s main goal is to protect human health and the environment from hazards posed by trans-boundary movements of hazardous waste.

Since 1990, U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions have increased by about 6 percent, according to the EPA, and we have been one of the largest, if not the largest, emitter of climate-changing emissions for decades. Our response has been to blame China and India for now polluting as much as we do.

Unfortunately, thinking of others and the environment aren’t ideals that get you elected or make you rich and powerful. The trickle-down effect of our expanding self-indulgence was on full display last Sunday at Brown University. The mess is likely unseen in the background of countless selfies.

It has become increasingly OK to leave our trash at college graduations, on airplanes, in movie theaters, at ballparks, in public parks and at the beach. Someone else will pick up mess ... or birds will choke on plastic bottle caps mistaken for food ... or donations will eventually be made to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Since we can’t even be bothered to properly dispose of trash and recyclables at an event that celebrates society’s potential, what sacrifices are we truly willing to make to ensure a prosperous and healthy future for others?

Frank Carini is the editor of ecoRI News.

 

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Frank Carini: Protect our forage fish

By FRANK CARINI for ecoRI News, of which he is the editor. Forage fish play a vital role in any marine ecosystem, but their importance is largely overlooked when it comes to fisheries management. In the ocean waters the coast of New England, for example, menhaden and Atlantic herring provide food for such recreationally and commercially important species  as striped bass, bluefish and cod.

These fish also are food for tuna, salmon, sharks, dolphins, seabirds and other animals that are integral to healthy marine ecosystems. Fishermen use squid as bait in lobster and crab traps. Juvenile menhaden, as they filter water, help remove nitrogen.

“Forage fish are worth more in the water than out,” Greg Wells, speaking for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ U.S. Oceans Environmental Group, told those who attended the March 24 Southern New England Recreational Fishing Symposium in Warwick, R.I. “If we don’t leave prey fish in ecosystems for predators and fishing, there are consequences to other wildlife, and this has an impact on eco-tourism businesses.”

Wells spoke about the importance of implementing ecosystem-based fisheries management plans, saying such an approach focuses on an entire ecosystem and includes the significant impacts made by humans.

“Decisions are based on understanding how an ecosystem works to make sure it maintains its health and productivity,” Wells said. “We need to be focusing on systems rather than single populations and stocks. Fisheries need to be managed with a cautious approach. We must be able to adapt to changing ocean conditions and fish populations.”

When it comes to most forage fish, however, very few regional or federal management plans even exist for species such as shad and river herring. As these fish are removed in bulk by trawlers, lost in bycatch and their populations redistributed by a changing climate, economical, environmental and societal impacts are created.

Demand, largely industrial, for these nutrient-rich species, which are mostly used to make fertilizer and cosmetics and to feed livestock and farmed fish, is increasing worldwide. Lost in the runaway consumption of this biomass is the importance these little fish play in supporting a variety of businesses, from commercial and recreational fishing to seafood restaurants and coastal tourism.

To improve the conservation of forage fish, the Pew Charitable Trusts and others concerned about the long-term survival of these species believe fishery managers need to set science-based limits on how many forage fish can be caught annually to ensure abundant food sources for other wildlife, including managed fish species, and that a national definition of what species qualify as forage fish for management purposes needs to be created.

“This has been a hot issue for a number of years,” said Kevin Friedland, a fisheries oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who spoke at the late-March symposium in Warwick. “It’s a complex mix of services that forage fish provide. Herring and menhaden are important species in how the ecosystem works.”

What exactly is a forage fish? According to Friedland, it’s a broad group of fish defined by a complex equation that includes stomach-content analysis. They are typically small, schooling species that eat microscopic plants (phytoplankton) and animals (zooplankton) drifting near the ocean surface.

“We’re just beginning to understand the role and importance of forage fish,” he said. “Forage fish are a big part of the total production of an ecosystem.”

In 2012, the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, a panel of 13 internationally known marine scientists, found that harvesting of forage fish at levels previously thought to be sustainable could have major adverse effects on some marine ecosystems.

A task force study has recommended cutting forage fish catch rates by half in many ecosystems and doubling the minimum required amount left in the water. These measures would help to maximize the benefits of forage fish as food for more highly valued species, according to the 120-page study.

The protection of forage fish, however, has an impact beyond simply feeding larger fish. For instance, a 2011 study of several ecosystems found that seabird populations decreased when the amount of forage fish fell below a third of the maximum historical level.

When some 1,600 starving sea lion pups washed up on California’s shores in 2013, researchers concluded that their mothers likely abandoned them because there weren’t enough forage fish, such as Pacific sardines, to support both generations.

The severe decline in the sardine population also was a threat to other marine life along the California coast and the fisheries that depend on that diversity. In response, the Pacific Fishery Management Council reduced sardine fishing levels by nearly two-thirds from 2013-14.

The council also has taken other steps in forage fish management, providing a model for its counterparts nationwide, according to Wells. In 2013, the council approved its first fishery ecosystem plan, which spells out how to take a broad approach to managing marine resources. The plan’s first management initiative called for developing a sound understanding of the potential impact of new fishing on forage species.

Most of the nation’s other fishery management councils, including the New England Fishery Management Council, haven’t adopted practices to better manage forage fish populations.

Earlier this month, however, recreational fishermen, charter boat captains, conservationists and birders up and down the East Coast received a bit of good news about the long-term management of Atlantic menhaden.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission decided to take an ecosystem-based approach to managing this forage fish species that is so vital to the local marine food web.

The commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board has committed to “moving forward with the development of an amendment to establish ecological based reference points that reflect Atlantic menhaden’s role as a forage species. The amendment will also consider changes to the current state‐by‐state allocation scheme.”

Lee Crocket, U.S. oceans director for The Pew Charitable Trusts, wrote that the May 6 commission’s decision “is a major shift from the old way of setting catch limits — focusing on a single species — and gives the commission a better way to consider the health of the broader ocean ecosystem.”

“Big schools of fatty, oily menhaden are crucial for marine wildlife such as whales, striped bass, ospreys, and eagles, so much so that they’ve earned the moniker ‘the most important fish in the sea,’” he wrote. “But menhaden also are the most heavily fished species on the East Coast. Just one company (Houston-based Omega Protein Corp.) nets nearly 290 million pounds of them a year to grind into fish meal and oil.”

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Commentary Robert Whitcomb Commentary Robert Whitcomb

Frank Carini: Rising waters threaten region's cultural treasures

Rising sea levels and increased flooding are problems for communities and historic districts along the southern New England coast, which has some thinking of turning Boston into a city of canals, much like Amsterdam and Venice. (Urban Land Institute)
Welcome to Boston

(FRANK CARINI is editor of ecoRI News )

Sea-level rise, more frequent and intense storms, and the subsequent flooding being caused by these climate-change impacts are putting U.S. historic sites at risk. The Cambridge-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) lists Boston’s historic districts among the country’s most endangered.

History-rich and waterlogged southern New England needs to develop a plan on how to adequately protect the region’s many cultural resources and historic buildings from a rising tide of sea and flood waters.

The May 2014 UCS report that lists Boston among the 30 most at-risk historic areas across the country notes that the city is one of several along the East Coast experiencing more frequent and severe coastal flooding and more intense storm surges.

“You can almost trace the history of the United States through these sites,” said Adam Markham, director of climate impacts at UCS and the report’s co-author. “The imminent risks to these sites and the artifacts they contain threaten to pull apart the quilt that tells the story of the nation’s heritage and history.”

The 84-page report claims rising waters are a threat to Boston’s historic Long Wharf and to Blackstone Block — a compact district of narrow, winding streets and alleys dating to the 17th century.

Ten of the 20 highest tides in Boston during the past hundred years have occurred in the past decade, according to the report. Since 1921, when such record keeping began, the city has experienced waves 3.5 feet taller than normal 20 times, and half of those instances have occurred in the past 10 years.

In fact, high tides along the East Coast are getting, well, higher, largely because sea levels are increasing. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists have said these increases are the result of shifts in climate — the seas, on average, are 8 inches higher than a century ago. The result is the growing occurrence of flooding in coastal communities.

Had Sandy, the October 2012 superstorm that wreaked havoc on New York and New Jersey and damaged historic buildings and landscapes up and down the Mid-Atlantic coast, hit Boston about five hours earlier, at high tide, the damage to some of the city’s historic sites would have been severe.

The Blackstone Block of Colonial streets, for one, would have flooded, according to the Boston Harbor Association. An association report claims that nearly 7 percent of the city would have been flooded, with floodwaters reaching City Hall, had Sandy arrived earlier.

The additional destruction under this scenario would have significantly damaged Boston’s economy. Some 12 million tourists visit the city annually, generating about $8 billion for the local economy. Many visit to walk the Freedom Trail, browse Faneuil Hall, a U.S. National Historic Landmark, and dine in some of the country’s oldest restaurants.

In fact, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ranks Boston the eighth-highest metropolitan area worldwide in expected economic losses, estimated at $237 million annually, on average, between now and 2050, because of coastal flooding.

Boston, however, is hardly the only seaside southern New England community with a fine collection of historic attractions. Rising tides also threaten historical properties in Fall River, New Bedford, Providence, Wickford Village in North Kingstown, R.I., and Groton, Conn., among other places.

Cultural resources — i.e., libraries, archives, historical societies, museums, city/town halls and historic farms— are an important part of southern New England’s unique heritage. Their significance also includes the literary works, rare collections, manuscripts, historical archives, municipal records and artifacts they hold.

The Massachusetts seaside towns of Duxbury, Marshfield and Scituate are rich in New England history, and they’re also prone to flooding because of rising tides and heavier storm surges. In fact, the three South Shore communities in the past 35 years are collectively responsible for nearly $80 million in FEMA Flood Insurance claims — nearly a quarter of the state’s total, according to a recent study.

From 1978 to 2013, the three towns received a total of $78.3 million in flood-related claims, as compared to the total of $337.8 million for all of Massachusetts.

These communities are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise because of their extensive floodplains and estuaries that reach into inland areas. In addition, their densely populated shorelines are fronted by narrow and fragile coastal and barrier beaches that are exposed to high-energy surf from Massachusetts and Cape Cod bays.

They have all experienced extensive damage over the years from storm-related flooding, which is predicted to worsen in the years ahead.

The Brown Street Bridge and much of historic Wickford Village in North Kingstown, R.I., was inundated during Superstorm Sandy’s visit in 2012. (Coastal Resources Center at URI)

The Brown Street Bridge and much of historic Wickford Village in North Kingstown, R.I., was inundated during Superstorm Sandy’s visit in 2012. (Photo from Coastal Resources Center at University of Rhode Island.)

The threat of rising seas, worsening storm surges and more frequent downpours arguably concerns Wickford more than any other historic district in southern New England.This small village on the west side of Narragansett Bay features one of the largest collections of 18th-century dwellings in the Northeast. Most of the village's historic homes and buildings — the majority privately owned — remain largely intact upon their original foundations.But rising waters are beginning to routinely lap against many of these old structures. A mid-August tidal surge, for instance, flooded a parking lot across the way from Gardner’s Wharf Seafood, turning the popular local business into a harbor island.

Grover Fugate, executive director of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), has warned that some projections show sea levels rising as much as 6 feet in the next 100 years. If that happens, he says much of Wickford Village would be lost.

A 6-foot rise would flood about 150 parcels of land in Wickford, as much as 5 percent of the town, according to a Rhode Island Sea Grant analysis. The value of the land that would be lost is some $80 million.

Wickford’s municipal parking lot already floods regularly at moon tides. During Sandy, the iconic village lost power, basements were flooded and septic systems overwhelmed. Street flooding turned some properties nearest Wickford Harbor into small islands.

With this historic village — regarded by many as the town’s heart and soul — so vulnerable to flooding, Rhode Island selected North Kingstown for a pilot project in a statewide effort to develop climate-change adaptation measures. One of the project’s first tasks was to map areas of North Kingstown vulnerable to sea-level rise and flooding and then identify priority at-risk infrastructure, buildings and assets in those areas.

It likely would take a massive engineering project to properly protect this harborside village. This prospect begs the same question municipal officials, historical societies and homeowners across southern New England are grappling with: “How do we protect our properties and these districts from climate change without sacrificing their cultural integrity?”

“How do we balance preserving the historical integrity of these homes and also get them out of the way?” Teresa Crean, a community planner and coastal management extension specialist with the Coastal Resources Center and Rhode Island Sea Grant, said during a “resiliency walk” she led along Wickford Harbor in October. “There’s little guidance currently that addresses how to deal with historic districts when it comes to climate change.”

Complex problem The complexities of coastal adaptation combined with little guidance from the federal government makes the problem of protecting historic districts from climate change all the more difficult.

To slow the rate of change and give archaeologists, historic preservationists and land managers more time to protect historic sites, carbon emissions must be reduced, according to last year’s UCS report. But even if we manage to reduce our carbon emissions, much of the change is already locked in, according to accepted science.

In Boston, where many properties are close to sea level and many areas were originally wetlands filled for development, the Harbor Association has suggested, among other things, that the city consider making room for the encroaching waters with canals and/or lagoons.

A 117-page study released in July 2013 entitled “Building Resilience in Boston: Best Practices for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience for Existing Buildings” offers experts’ recommendations for property owners in preparing for emergencies related to climate change.

Many of the techniques that are available to protect properties and/or districts are costly and/or don’t mesh with historic-district rules. Elevating a home, for example, can cost upwards of $150,000, according to Crean. She noted that in The Point neighborhood of Newport, R.I., which has one of the highest concentrations of Colonial homes in the United States, some homeowners have elevated their property to get out of the flood zone.

“But then there’s the ongoing discussion on consistency and what historic district commissions will allow,” Crean said.

Across southern New England such discussions have already become heated. Like most issues related to climate change, it’s difficult for some to even admit there’s a problem. Add historic district to the equation, and the issue becomes even more complicated.

Two years ago, Newport banned wind turbines from most of the city. Local officials were particularly concerned about property owners erecting small turbines anywhere in the city’s historic neighborhoods.

That same City Council concern, however, didn’t transfer to the power lines that connect the old homes in these neighborhoods to utility poles, or to satellite-TV dishes.

Just like the debate, often heated, that surrounds what is allowed in these historic neighborhoods, the conversation about how to protect them from climate change will likely be even more contentious.

Among the issues that will likely be hotly debated will be septic systems. To see how divisive the issue of cesspool phaseout and connection to municipal sewer can be, look no further than Warwick, R.I.

Much of the public opposition there comes from homeowners who are concerned about cost. Others have said, incorrectly, that if a cesspool — which is nothing more than a perforated steel bucket buried in a shallow pit or a covered pit lined with unmortared brick or stone — is properly maintained it will last forever. Some opponents against having to connect to the city’s sewer system have called the idea a tax; others have called it extortion.

Similar opposition has been heard in other communities in the region, such as Portsmouth, R.I.

In North Kingstown, however, most of the town is scheduled to be sewered by 2017, but Wickford will not be, and property owners there will be required to upgrade failing septic systems, which are typically expensive projects.

“At what point do you allow properties to be occupied when you can’t flush a toilet?” Crean asked. “It’s another tough question we’re struggling with, to honor property rights and investments made and to protect public safety and health.”

There are homes in historic districts in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, such as Wickford, and Connecticut that can’t flush their toilets now after heavy rains, for fear of popping the caps off their inundated cesspools or septic tanks.

In fact, climate-change impacts will likely increase groundwater elevations in southern New England’s coastal areas, which could potentially impact underground infrastructure, such as septic tanks and cesspools, commonly found in historic districts.

Protecting the region’s historic properties from the rising waters of climate change will take planning, funding, compromise and sacrifice. It will be considerably more difficult than simply enacting a plastic shopping bag ban, and we’ve seen how punishing that endeavor has become.

Impacts to historical/cultural resources from climate change range from coastal erosion and storm damage to the effects of increased flooding, melting permafrost and more rapid deterioration because of changing rain and temperature patterns, according to the National Park Service.

To properly protect the country’s inventory of these resources, the federal agency has noted:

Cultural resources can’t be managed in isolation; natural resources and the surrounding landscape must be taken into account.

A national inventory and prioritization of vulnerable sites is needed to assess the uniqueness of these sites.

A time frame for adaptation strategies needs to established.

A resource in poor condition due to deferred maintenance or insufficient funding has a different kind of vulnerability.

There is no natural hierarchy or sequence for the criteria; they should be assessed as more of a matrix that will vary site to site.

To incorporate many of the possible solutions will likely require zoning changes and embracing best technologies. For instance, would municipal zoning and/or historic-district guidelines allow for the use of composting toilets? Would home owners be interested in installing them?

Also, utilities in most historic homes are in the basement and vulnerable to flooding. Where can they be moved to better withstand increased flooding that climate change is expected to cause?

Can solar panels and wind turbines be tastefully incorporated onto historic buildings? Will green roofs be allowed in historic districts?

“Zoning needs to catch up with new technologies and best practices,” Crean said. “But a lot of agencies aren’t even on the same page.”

As Crean noted during the October tour of Wickford Village, one thing is for sure, “The longer we wait to address this problem, the more expensive the solutions become.”

Both financially and culturally.

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