from a National Stage in D.C.

By M. KELSEY LANE/ecoRI correspondent

Better ocean management has been embraced by the Obama administration. (Frank Carini/ecoRI staff)PROVIDENCE — During a recent talk about marine spatial planning in a room full of professors and students at Brown University’s Center for Environmental Studies, Sandra Whitehouse jokingly described her career path as a “downward spiral,” from science to regulating to politics.

Whitehouse, wife of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., received a Ph.D. in biological oceanography from the University of Rhode Island. She worked on environmental policy in Rhode Island for several years, before she became the senior advisor for the Ocean Conservancy in Washington, D.C., in 2008.

She took the D.C. job months before “there was a big change in Washington,” said Whitehouse, as a picture of President Obama bodysurfing flashed before the room. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had been trying to promote a focus on ocean health for a year and a half, she said, “but we started getting traction” during the transition between the Bush and Obama administrations.

Less than six months into his presidency, in June 2009, President Obama issued a memorandum calling for an overhaul of national ocean policy and creating a new interagency Ocean Policy Task Force.

Sandra Whitehouse“The problem,” Whitehouse said, “is that the current management system is very fractured.”

New development projects must maneuver a maze of different agencies and regulators, according to Whitehouse. She cited the failed Grays Harbor Ocean Energy Co.’s wave-energy project, where the corporation discovered, after several million dollars of development, submarine lanes passed through the project area, in U.S. waters south of Block Island.

“If we were being more proactive, and mapping all this, we could be making better decisions,” Whitehouse said.

The Ocean Policy Task Force completed an interim report in September. During the public comment period, field hearings were held in five locations throughout the country. “With some prodding,” Whitehouse said, Providence was chosen as one of the locations. The Ocean State was a natural choice, she said, “especially because Rhode Island is already doing marine spatial planning,” referring to the state’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan (Ocean SAMP).

The Ocean Policy Task Force completed a framework in December. The goals of the framework are to facilitate sustainable economic growth and improve ecosystem health and services. To achieve these goals, the plan called for an “ecosystem-based” approach to ocean management.

Whitehouse described ecosystem-based management as a holistic approach to ocean management, evaluating the biological, physical and chemical components, as well as human uses, all at the same time. And because so much of the planning is based on mapping, marine spatial planning is a step-by-step approach to ecosystem-based management, she said.

Marine spatial planning emphasizes stakeholder engagement and a science-based approach, attempting to reduce user conflict by coordinating resource use and conservation. “One advantage is it gets scientists involved in the management process,” Whitehouse said. “Our goal is having a healthy ecosystem.”

The task force’s final report will be released this month. The report will lay the framework for the formation of a national Ocean Council. Regional planning bodies throughout the country will be in charge of ocean management within particular areas.

President Obama must approve the final report. “Once that’s done, our work is really not done,” Whitehouse said. “It’s a great start to the process, but we must move beyond the Obama administration to Congress.”

The Ocean Conservancy wants to guarantee the plan is durable, with statutes for federal agencies, and funding. Though some money has been appropriated for the Ocean Policy Task Force, it is severely underfunded and “needs to get some teeth,” Whitehouse said.

Meanwhile, marine spatial planning is gaining popularity thanks to the task force and worldwide efforts around the globe, such as in the Florida Keys and along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

“We want to use the momentum to catapult this into Congress,” she said, noting that the NGO community has struggled to gain support for marine spatial planning. She acknowledged that education and communication about marine spatial planning and ocean conservation are critical.

“(Congress is) way behind the learning curve than most of the key people in the administration,” Whitehouse said. “The way to do it is to get constituents involved.”

Kelsey Lane is a Brown University senior majoring in geology and biology.

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

(Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management graphic)BRISTOL — Pollution from a variety of sources in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts continues to contaminate Mount Hope Bay and the Kickemuit River, and often forces areas to be closed to shellfishing and swimming.

Last year, both bodies of water were placed on the Clean Water Act’s annual list of impaired waterways because of one or more water quality issues.

The state Department of Environmental Management (DEM) recently completed a federally mandated water quality restoration study that addresses long-standing bacteria-related impairments to Mount Hope Bay and the Kickemuit River estuary.

Mount Hope Bay, which forms the northeast corner of the Narragansett Bay estuary, and its tributaries, including the Kickemuit, Lee, Coles, Quequechan and Taunton rivers, exhibit elevated levels of fecal coliform bacteria, particularly after heavy rains. Elevated levels of fecal coliform bacteria impair recreational uses in the bay and cause the frequent closure of shellfishing beds following a half-inch or more of rain.

Pollution from stormwater runoff, combined sewer overflows (CSO), failing and improperly maintained septic systems and leaking sewer lines forces the closure of approved shellfishing areas within Mount Hope Bay and the Kickemuit River estuary to shellfish harvesting on an average of 180 days per year as a result of bacterial contamination, according to DEM officials.

In 2006, the DEM took 500 samples from Mount Hope Bay during both dry and wet weather. The difference in water quality is distinctly noticeable.

“After heavy rain events, sanitary quality in the area markedly and quickly deteriorates,” said Brian Zalewsky, of the DEM’s Office of Water Resources. “A majority of the pollution comes from Fall River down the Taunton River. But we do have some sources in Rhode Island that need to be addressed.”

Among those local sources in the Mount Hope Bay watershed contributing to the problem are failed septic systems and substandard cesspools, most notably in North Tiverton, and leaking sewer lines in Bristol and Warren, according to the DEM.

Sampling conducted during wet weather by DEM’s Office of Water Resources and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries also found that stormwater outfall pipes at various locations around the bay contribute to localized degradation of water quality.

A 24-inch culvert on Robert Gray Avenue, for example, is a big source of pollution during wet and dry weather.

Both the DEM and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection are preparing reports to address the Mount Hope Bay watershed’s contamination problems.

Although more than 70 percent of Mount Hope Bay is in Rhode Island, more than 90 percent of its drainage basin is in Massachusetts. CSOs from Fall River, Mass., are the largest source of fecal bacteria into Mount Hope Bay during heavy rains, according to the recent draft study. However, ongoing construction of facilities in Fall River to store and treat its CSO has begun to mitigate this source of contamination.

The city of Fall River features a sewer system with about 180 miles of sewer line and 11 pump stations. Heavy rains cause frequent CSOs at 19 locations throughout the city that discharge into Mount Hope Bay, the Taunton River and the Quequechan River.

It has been estimated that historically, at least until the operation of the Fall River storage tunnel, about 1.5 billion gallons of stormwater and untreated and/or partially treated sewage were discharged annually into Mount Hope Bay. This was the largest source of fecal coliform bacteria into the bay during wet weather, according to previous studies.

Additionally, during the past decade, a number of municipalities within the Taunton River watershed have implemented measures to address sewage discharges. Taunton, for example, made upgrades to its wastewater treatment plant in both 2001 and ’02. As a result, the number of CSO events there has dropped.

Despite the ongoing efforts of the 10 Massachusetts communities and five Rhode Island communities located partially or primarily within the Mount Hope Bay watershed, pollution remains a problem.

More than 100 types of pathogenic microorganisms can be present in water that is polluted by fecal matter (typically animal waste) and/or phage (its presence is more indicative of human waste than animal) and can cause outbreaks of waterborne disease, according to the DEM’s 2009 draft report.

In order to meet federal water quality standards during both dry and wet weather, significant reductions in identified sources of contamination must be accomplished, according to the DEM. The states’ two studies will establish requirements for those pollution sources.

These recommendations will complement existing pollution reduction efforts in the Mount Hope Bay watershed, such as the Fall River CSO abatement project and stormwater management programs being implemented by cities and towns throughout the region, according to the report.

Editor’s note: Second of a two-part series about the health of Narragansett Bay.

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

For centuries, those who have lived and worked within the Narragansett Bay watershed have tailored the valuable ecosystem to suit their needs.

Native Americans burned forest underbrush to create farmland. Colonists cleared forests for fuel.

Dams have been built on nearly every waterway — first to power sawmills and gristmills, later to power factories and then to develop drinking-water reservoirs.

In 1793, Samuel Slater built a water-powered textile mill on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket. It was the first successful power mill built in the United States, marked the beginning of the nation’s Industrial Revolution and spawned a burgeoning local manufacturing economy made possible by Narragansett Bay’s rivers and ports.

Shorelines have been developed for transportation, military, energy and commercial purposes. Railroads and bridges have been built on, around and across the bay, and, as cities and towns grew, streams became stormwater pipes and wastewater treatment plants were built to handle the demands of 2 million people who live in the Narragansett Bay watershed.

Today, land-use management is among the highest of priorities for local environmentalists.

“Taking down habitat for development is a growing trend,” said Richard Ribb, program director for the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program. “Fourteen percent of the entire Narragansett Bay watershed is impervious.”

Hard surfaces, such as asphalt, concrete and roofing, and soils compacted by urban development don’t allow water to seep into the ground. Water that doesn’t soak into the ground becomes runoff and travels to the nearest body of water, usually carrying pollutants and debris.

As the amount of impervious surfaces increases, typically through construction and development, more runoff is created and less water is able to sink into the ground. Infiltration is important because groundwater travels slowly to creeks and streams and sustains their flows through drier spells. Water that travels slowly through the ground also gets filtered before dumping into a waterway.

In Rhode Island, where development is outpacing population growth by 9 percent, according to Ribb, that carries added significance since 75 percent of the population lives in a 40-mile-long urban/suburban corridor along the shores of Narragansett Bay and in the valleys of the Blackstone and Pawtuxet rivers.

The Rhode Island Statewide Planning Program has projected development will consume an additional 107,000 acres in the next 20 years.

To soften the environmental impacts caused by this predicted development, organizations such as the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, the Narragansett Bay Research Reserve and Grow Smart Rhode Island, among a host of others, are promoting proactive planning and smarter growth techniques, such as reducing road widths and building fewer parking lots.

Land-use planning and low-impact development are being touted as key initiatives that will help lessen the environmental impacts of sprawl.

“We’re not going to stop development, but we can’t continue to cut down forests,” said Jennifer West, the coastal training program coordinator for the Narragansett Bay Research Reserve.

The University of Rhode Island graduate helps decision-makers better understand the connections between development and its effects on the bay. Her priority audience is municipal officials, including planning boards and town and city councils.

“We hope to help municipal officials and developers make better land-use decisions,” West said. “We hope to show decision-makers that growth should be concentrated to those areas that make the most sense. Development anywhere impacts the bay. Development in Woonsocket impacts the bay.”

Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns have adopted or drafted a comprehensive development ordinance.

More environmentally conscious development comes with many advantages, West said. They include preserving land without having to buy it, preserving aesthetic features and scenic views, and reducing stormwater runoff.

“We’ve been building out the landscape for 300 years and that has a cumulative impact on this watershed,” said Tom Ardito, outreach and policy coordinator for the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program.

Growth pressures
To better deal with development, Rhode Island needs improved measures for controlling growth pressures, according to Ardito.

“Other states are more advanced when it comes to treating runoff in a more effective way,” said Ardito, who mentioned Florida and Oregon as two such states. “Tons of runoff gets through our existing infrastructure.”

He suggested using more of Rhode Island’s federal stimulus money on wastewater technology and infrastructure, instead of on old standbys.

“Repaving projects aren’t green and they don’t create that many jobs,” he said.

To help officials and the public better understand the bay region and the impact development has on it, the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program created “Currents of Change,” a study released last month after two years of research.

The estuary program worked with host of agencies and individuals in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts who share a stake in protecting this vast watershed.

“You always hear about how the bay is one of the most studied places,” Ribb said, “but these were individual studies and none of them were connected. There was no movie of the bay.”

He hopes “Currents of Change” provides a starting point for better developing and managing information about the Narragansett Bay region, which includes the Wood-Pawcatuck river system and Rhode Island’s coastal salt ponds.

This region is 2,066 square miles, with 50 percent in Massachusetts, 48 percent in Rhode Island and 2 percent in Connecticut.

“We need to look at the region as a whole, not just as a body of water but as an ecosystem, and see how everything is connected,” Ribb said. “Holding the line is progress because we don’t know all the conditions. The information is changing over time.”

Changing concerns
In just the past three-plus decades, water quality in the Narragansett Bay region has improved, thanks to investments in wastewater infrastructure, tighter state and federal regulations, industry changes and a shift in the economy.

“The levels of metals and organics from industry have gone down,” said Chris Deacutis, chief scientist for the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, “and hydrocarbons are decreasing.”

Narragansett Bay waterways are being contaminated with less of these pollutants for a number of reasons.

Leaded gasoline is gone, and cars run cleaner and leak less oil.

Textile mills along the banks of the Blackstone River have all but disappeared, taking with them the dyes and chemicals that were spilled for nearly a century into Rhode Island and Massachusetts waterways.

Restaurants and residential/office space are the new faces of the 25-block Jewelry District in Providence, which at its peak in 1976 employed 32,500 jewelry workers. Most of those jobs have long since disappeared, along with the industry’s heavy metals and toxins that would find their way into the Providence River.

Despite these gains, however, the Narragansett Bay watershed still faces a host of troubles, from the growing emergence of invasive species to pressures caused by development to what impact chemicals in the water from the increased use of pharmaceuticals, birth control and beauty products will have on the long-term health of wildlife and humans.

“We have made a remarkable improvement in the health of Narragansett Bay by addressing our deficient combined sewer overflow system and minimizing nitrogen discharges, but we have a long way to go,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said a water infrastructure hearing earlier this month in Providence.

Editor’s note: First of a two-part series about the health of Narragansett Bay.

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

“Fish need oxygen too,” read the bold, blue letters across Christopher Deacutis’ gray T-shirt as he helped haul up the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program’s $22,000 Sea-Bird — a 50-pound, cylindrical oxygen sensor.

It was the first day of September and Deacutis, the chief scientist for the estuary program, and his team of assistants — Lesley Lambert, Tim Delp and Heather Stoffel — were using the high-tech piece of equipment to record oxygen levels, temperatures and salinity, among other things, at 29 specific locations across Narragansett Bay.

The oxygen readings at the bottom of Greenwich Bay were, as expected, troubling.

Dissolved oxygen is necessary to sustain life in any estuarine system. In aquatic ecosystems, low levels — referred to as hypoxia — usually mean a concentration of 2 to 3 milligrams of oxygen per liter of water.

The saturation levels of dissolved oxygen in Narragansett Bay are typically 6 to 8 milligrams per liter, according to studies.

On this day, the bottom of Greenwich Bay was averaging about 1 milligram of oxygen per liter of water. At a bottom location in Greenwich Cove, just offshore from the East Greenwich wastewater treatment plant, the Sea-Bird recorded an oxygen reading of 0.4.

“There’s definitely no fish down there,” Deacutis said as he and Delp pulled the 5-year-old Sea-Bird from the water. “Anything below three starts causing stress. Below one milligram, you start killing things — fast.”

Mobile marine animals, such as adult fish, can often survive hypoxia by moving into oxygenated waters. When they can’t, such as when young fish need to spend time in a habitat that has become hypoxic, the result is a fish kill.

More than six years ago, Narragansett Bay experienced what many believe to be the worst fish kill in these waters in the past 50 years. More than a million fish, primarily juvenile menhaden, floated to the surface on Aug. 20, 2003.

Hundreds of small crabs, blue crabs, grass shrimp, blackfish, horseshoe crabs and American eels also suffocated.

Two other times in the past nine years — 2001 and 2006 — Narragansett Bay has experienced large fish kills because of a lack of oxygen in the water.

While the direct effect of hypoxia is fish kills, such events also deplete valuable fish stocks, damage the ecosystem and hurt the tourism industry.

So massive was the 2003 fish kill, that it grabbed the attention of Gov. Donald L. Carcieri and state legislators who responded by establishing committees to study the issue of hypoxia and what can be done to control it.

Summertime blues
Summer in particular is a stressful three months for the waters of Narragansett Bay, as heavy rains and warm temperatures create nasty conditions for marine life, especially for bottom-dwelling species.

These conditions combined with excess nutrients, specifically nitrogen, deplete oxygen, cause algae blooms and devastate fragile ecosystems.

A decade ago, Deacutis was one of the first to introduce evidence that low levels of dissolved oxygen were degrading the integrity of Narragansett Bay. Deacutis presented his findings in 1998, and since then a group of scientists, researchers and volunteers have been monitoring the bay’s oxygen levels every summer.

The oxygen levels fluctuate depending on many factors, most notably rain, temperature and wind strength and direction, but low levels are routinely recorded from mid-June to mid-September at the western edge of Greenwich Bay and in the Providence River.

“The worst water is on the bottom,” Deacutis said. “The oxygen at the bottom is used up quickly until a big event like a storm mixes everything up.”

Until then, however, life at the bottom of certain areas of the bay can be a struggle for such species as scallops, soft-shell clams, blue mussels, razor clams and shrimp.

“Sensitive species are fine until the summer turns the water nasty,” said Deacutis, who has a Ph.D. in oceanography. “Quahogs are fine year-round because they can hold their breath for a month, but soft-cell crabs can only hold their breath for two weeks and scallops for about an hour.”

Problems caused by low oxygen levels are exacerbated by stormwater runoff and effluent from wastewater treatment facilities and septic systems that contains high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus.

Nitrogen and nutrient pollution remain the single greatest threat to the ecological health of Narragansett Bay, according to Jonathan Stone, executive director of Save The Bay.

Algae thrive in waters that contain excess nutrients. These tiny, single-celled plants bloom in huge numbers, coloring the water and decreasing its clarity. Algae typically live for only a few days to a week and then sink to the bottom, where oxygen-sucking bacteria feed on the dead matter that has blanketed the bottom.

It’s a vicious cycle that has created places, such as the bottom of Greenwich Bay, that are a barren wasteland for much of the year.

“Until the early 1950s, there was just summer housing along (Greenwich) bay,” Deacutis said. “Now a high density of year-round housing with sub-par septic systems is loading up the bay with nutrients. Sandy soil in the area allows the stuff to flow quickly into the bay.”

Since oxygen levels typically are lowest in estuaries and coastal areas, where the water is poorly mixed and where harmful runoff is collected, nursery habitat for fish and shellfish often is affected. Without nursery grounds, young marine life can’t find the food or habitat it needs to reach adulthood.

This type of oxygen-deprived, nutrient-rich environment can quickly weaken, reduce or kill off important fish and shellfish stocks.

Greenwich Bay was once one of the richest bay scallop areas in Rhode Island. It’s no coincidence that today it lacks a significant scallop population and has no substantial eelgrass beds.

Survey says
In 1999, less than a year after Deacutis introduced evidence of the bay’s low oxygen levels, the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program organized a volunteer effort to investigate summertime oxygen levels.

For the past 10 years, a collaborative group of scientists and environmental professionals — dubbed “The Insomniacs” because they used to work at night — from the estuary program, the University of Rhode Island, Brown University and Roger Williams University have been collecting data from the same 75 locations throughout Narragansett Bay.

The positions were chosen based on various depths and in a pattern that allowed “us to map across a large area,” Deacutis said.

Teams in two to three boats take readings at the 75 sites six times a year — once in June and September and twice in July and August.

The first five years of this summertime survey were conducted with volunteers. There were no funds — federal, state or otherwise. There wasn’t even gas money for the boats.

For the past five years, the project has been funded through a shared federal grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The project costs about $40,000 annually and Deacutis said there is enough money to fund the work through next summer.

Since 2004, The Insomniac project has worked in tandem with a study being coordinated by six agencies, including the Narragansett Bay Commission, Save The Bay and the Department of Environmental Management.

Monitoring stations attached to 13 buoys around Narragansett Bay are fitted with instruments that collect water-quality data every 15 minutes. These buoys collect similar information — temperature, salinity, chlorophyll and dissolved oxygen — as the 75 Insomniac sites but in different parts of the bay.

“The further you go down the bay, the better the oxygen levels get at the bottom,” said Stoffel, a marine research assistant at URI. “Off Prudence Island and at the tip of Newport there are better oxygen levels because oceanic waters are coming into the bay there.”

With federal money in short supply, however, Deacutis is worried about the future of his survey work and the meaning of 10 years’ worth of data.

“If the federal money disappears, the monitoring stops,” he said. “We lose our ability to interpret change. Was it a freak event, part of a cycle, are things getting better or are they getting worse?

“It’s like taking medication for high blood pressure but then never taking your blood pressure again. Is the medicine working? Do we increase or decrease the dosage? Monitoring lets us know if management is working.”