By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI staff

Narragansett Bay is experiencing warmer water, lower oxygen and more algae blooms.A midsummer checkup confirmed a few, mostly discouraging, trends about the health of Narragansett Bay.

Equipped with submersible Sea-Bird monitoring devices, observers from Save The Bay, along with Brown University scientists and students, recently crisscrossed the bay in three boats, taking measurements of the water’s salinity, temperature and oxygen content.

The collaborative project, which includes considerable support from the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, conducts the surveys as part of an 11-year study of dozens of areas with low levels of dissolved oxygen. It also aims to determine if hundreds of millions of dollars spent upgrading wastewater treatment facilities and managing stormwater runoff are improving the state’s complex aquatic ecosystem.<<Read full story

By ecoRI staff

In Rhode Island, the percentage of health standard exceedances increased to 20 percent in 2009 from 13 percent in 2008. Rhode Island ranks 30th in the nation for its beach-water quality testing.NARRAGANSETT — Beach closings and advisories due to pollution went up last year in Rhode Island, totaling 178 days of closed beaches, according to the Natural Resource Defense Council’s 20th annual beach water quality report released this week.

In response, Environment Rhode Island recently called for increased federal funding and strong Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules for reducing stormwater pollution.

Across the country last year, there were more than 18,000 closing and advisory days at ocean, bay and Great Lakes beaches, confirming that the nation’s beaches continue to suffer from serious water pollution that puts swimmers at risk.<<Read full story

By DAVID FISHER/ecoRI staff

The Mobile Organic Resource Procurement Hub, or MORPH. (David Fisher/ecoRI staff)PROVIDENCE — Food service is a notoriously waste intensive business. Restaurants, cafés and the like generate a large volume of variegated waste, much of which is perishable. In most cases, restaurants don’t even sort the recyclables from their waste stream.

Cardboard, paper, glass, plastic and food waste compete for space in a lot of restaurant Dumpsters. This leads, to put it mildly, an aromatic wafting from some Dumpsters and literally tons of recyclables taking up ever-shrinking space in our nation’s landfills.

While working at a popular city restaurant, Mike Bradlee has seen firsthand the staggering volume of waste in the restaurant business.<<Read full story

By ecoRI staff

The 72-minute documentary will be shown Sunday at Everyman Bistro in Providence.PROVIDENCE — The documentary “Fresh” celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing the food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of U.S. agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for our food and planet’s future.

The 72-minute film will be shown this Sunday, Aug. 1, at Everyman Bistro, at the American Locomotive Works, 311 Iron Horse Way. The film will begin at 8 p.m. There is a suggested donation of $5.

Among several main characters, “Fresh” features urban farmer and activist Will Allen, the recipient of the MacArthur 2008 Genius Award, and sustainable farmer and entrepreneur Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”

“‘Fresh’ portrays a movement that is happening in America and worldwide,” according to director Sofia Joanes. “The alternative food market is the fastest growing market in the United States, even though it still makes up a minuscule percentage of the food economy. And it’s incredibly energetic. Where it will lead us, I don’t know.”

Joanes initially intended to make a film that documented the urgency of the climate-change crisis, hoping to scare herself and others into taking action. Instead, she “encountered the most inspiring people, ideas and initiatives. Who knew that we already had the solutions to so many of our problems and that some of us were already hard at work implementing them?”

“Instead of the despair and inaction unwittingly fostered by the media, these examples of change suggested a very different perspective,” she said.” “Life is an indivisible network in which every node is critical. Each one of us is creating the world we are living in. It is this creative process that gives our life meaning and pleasure.”

By ecoRI staff

The Lower Shannock Falls Dam was originally built to power a grist mill in the 1820s and was later associated with a textile mill — known as Knowles Mill — that operated until the 1940s. (Photo courtesy of Save The Bay)RICHMOND — In an effort to increase migratory fish habitat — vital to the health of Little Narragansett Bay, an estuary of the Pawcatuck River on the Rhode Island/Connecticut border — and because it will lessen the possibility of flooding in the Pawcatuck River basin, work has begun on the removal of two dams and the restoration of fish ladders.

The Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association and project partners, including Save The Bay, are working to provide fish passage at the three dams on the upper Pawcatuck River: Lower Shannock Falls, Kenyon Mill Pond and Upper Shannock — also known as Horseshoe Falls.

This project, including the construction of a fish ladder, is designed to allow fish access to an added 10 miles of the Pawcatuck River and to open an additional 1,300 acres of spawning habitat, including Wordens Pond in South Kingstown, according to Save The Bay.

By ecoRI staff

Belleville Pond in North Kingstown.WICKFORD — The state Department of Environmental Management (DEM) will hold a public meeting Thursday, July 29, to discuss strategies for restoring water quality in Belleville Pond and the Belleville upper pond inlet. The meeting will take place from 5-7 p.m. at North Kingstown Free Library, 100 Boone St.

DEM has drafted a water quality restoration study — known as a total maximum daily load (TMDL) — that addresses long-standing phosphorus-related impairments to the pond. Such studies are mandated by the federal Clean Water Act and establish the pollutant reduction needed to meet water quality standards.

Belleville Pond and the Bellville upper pond inlet exhibit elevated levels of phosphorus. Elevated levels of phosphorus impair recreational uses in the pond and cause excessive growth of aquatic plants, which in turn can lead to low dissolved oxygen levels in the water column and harmful impacts to aquatic life.<<Read full story

Fueled by growing anxiety about epidemics of chronic diseases such as asthma, obesity and diabetes, there is an increasing recognition that the design of our transportation system imposes an environment that can cause illness, disability and injury. Recently, the American Public Health Association officially joined with Transportation for America to highlight the role that advocacy for public transit plays in overall public health.

Here’s why.

A lack of physical activity is seen as a critical environmental enabling factor that accelerates the explosive increase of obesity and associated ills, especially among children. Opportunities to be physically active have been engineered out of much of our society. This is reflected in one instance by the drastic decline in the percent of children who walk or bike to school. Fewer than 6 percent of kids walk or bike to school, compared with 66 percent in 1974.<<Opinion

By ecoRI staff

During the past several years, 30 percent of lobsters caught off the New England coast have had shell disease.KINGSTON —The public is invited to attend the two-day Ronald C. Baird Sea Grant Science Symposium (Aug. 10-11) entitled “New Approaches to Understanding Emerging Marine Diseases: From Science to Management” at the University of Rhode Island.

The symposium follows the conclusion of a $3 million New England Lobster Research Initiative that looked into the causes of lobster shell disease and the contributing factors that make lobsters vulnerable to it.

Increasingly, lobsters with shell disease have been found off the coast of New England. In fact, during the past several years, 30 percent of lobsters caught have had shell disease.

There is no mistaking a lobster with shell disease — there are black spots on its shell, and the worst cases appear to have shells that are rotting away, in some cases killing the lobster through secondary infection or as a result of other stresses.

The initiative funded scientists from 16 institutions who spent three years studying shell disease. Experts in crustacean endocrinology, genetics, veterinary medicine, behavior, microbiology, lobster biology, chemistry, environmental science and epidemiology worked together with fishermen and resource managers to uncover the dynamics of shell disease.

The group will present its findings, and the implications for dealing with shell disease and other marine diseases, at the Baird symposium at URI’s Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences. The symposium is free to attend, including meals, but registration is required. For more information or to register, visit seagrant.gso.uri or call Tracy Kennedy at 401-874-6800.

Congress appropriated $3 million to establish a cooperative research program — the aforementioned New England Lobster Research Initiative — to study the causes and consequences of lobster shell disease. The goal of the project was to describe the disease agent and how it works, and to determine the extent and severity of the disease in New England waters. For more information, visit seagrant.gso.uri.edu.

By ecoRI staff

WARWICK — Subject to court approval, Cardi Materials LLC will pay a $55,000 civil penalty and perform an additional project costing $168,500 to resolve numerous violations of the Clean Water Act at its local concrete manufacturing facility, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In addition to fines, the settlement requires Cardi to eliminate all process water discharges from the facility. Process waters include waters from concrete production manufacturing operations such as vehicle and equipment cleaning and concrete truck washout, and can contain caustic chemicals that are toxic to fish and other aquatic life. These measures will result in the elimination of toxic chemical discharges, the elimination of tons of sediment being discharged into the environmental annually, and significant reductions in oil, grease, iron, nitrate and nitrogen discharges.<<Read full story

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

Chicken keeping in Providence is illegal, but a group of residents is hoping to change that. (Photo courtesy of Christine Chitnis)PROVIDENCE — Christine Chitnis’ chickens have been living on a “foster” farm for more than a month. She “misses them terribly,” but she can’t bring her two feathery friends home until the city passes a chicken-keeping ordinance.

There have been rumblings for sometime about overturning the livestock ordinance that prohibits chickens within city limits, and this summer they just might be invited back. A group of local backyard farmers began an organized movement to bring chickens to Providence as soon as Chitnis’ chickens were deported to Massachusetts.

The city’s animal control officer knocked on Chitnis’ front door in early June and told the expecting mother she had two days to get her poultry pets out of Providence, where it has been illegal for decades to keep chickens, cows, turkeys and various other barn animals.<<Read full story