Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program

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Celebrating 23 Years

Twenty years of Science and Management in Buzzards Bay

[Now: 23 years as a program; 20 years in the NEP]

by Dr. Joe Costa, Executive Director      Fall 2005

In 2005 the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program celebrated its 20th year in our efforts to protect and restore Buzzards Bay. Our program, which is part of the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, began in 1985 after the United States Congress designated Buzzards Bay an "Estuary of National Significance."(1) We were established under the name the Buzzards Bay Project.

The effort was lead by Senator Edward Kennedy and Congressman Gerry Studds, who joined with other legislators to create 4 new estuary programs around the country to emulate the Chesapeake Bay Program, which Congress had created in 1983. These new programs, which were administered by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), were founded on the principal that good science could lead to good management, especially if scientists and managers also met with the public, industry, local officials, and other stakeholders in the community, to develop rational and publicly supported Action Plans.

Soon other legislators wanted a National Estuary in their state. Partly at the encouragement of the EPA to put order to the process, Congress created the National Estuary Program in their 1987 renewal of the Clean Water Act. This legislation created a formal process for nominating, administering, and overseeing these new National Estuary Programs. In 1987, the Buzzards Bay Project applied for entry into the National Estuary Program. Today, a total of 28 National Estuaries have now been designated.

The first few years of the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program were dedicated to funding scientific studies. From this work came some new ideas, some of which surprised residents and local officials. For example, a big concern for residents was that more shellfish beds were being closed around Buzzards Bay because of bacterial pollution. However, when we began looking at pollution sources, we discovered that that shellfish bed closures in towns like Westport, Mattapoisett, Marion, and Falmouth were not caused by the New Bedford sewage outfall as many believed, but were caused by local sources of pollution like stormwater pipes, farm animal wastes, and cesspools or failing septic systems.

These studies also identified new problems that had never been considered for Buzzards Bay. For example, nitrogen from wastewater discharges, septic system contamination of groundwater, and runoff of fertilizers from lawns, golf course, and agricultural lands were over fertilizing coastal waters, and was becoming one of the most important threats to the bay. This "coastal eutrophication" was causing the excessive growth of algae and making eelgrass beds, a vital habitat and nursery for fish and shellfish, disappear. The overloading of nitrogen was also causing the accumulation of algae on some beaches, robbed oxygen from the water, and changed the bottom of bays in ways that desirable fish and shellfish could no longer be sustained. This new pollution was more insidious than other contamination. Bacterial pollution results in the closure of shellfish beds, but the shellfish remain. Coastal eutrophication causes shellfish to disappear altogether because their habitat is destroyed.

In the early 1990s, the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program began translating a myriad of scientific and technical studies into a Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan. This CCMP was completed and approved by the state and EPA 1992.

This management plan was fundamentally different from most that came before it. While the plan acknowledged the importance of serious pollution problems like the New Bedford PCB Superfund site, the need to upgrade the New Bedford Sewage Treatment Plant and eliminate the city's combined sewer and stormwater overflow pipes, it placed a far greater emphasis on managing the cumulative impacts of growth all around the bay, and the need to manage the so-called "non-point" sources of pollution, the small pipes, land runoff, and groundwater seepage that conveys pollutants to the bay. Because the management plan focused so much on these cumulative effects, it was not surprising that three-fourths of the 100-plus recommendations were directed to municipal government. This was because it is the decisions of conservations commissions, boards of health, planning boards, and boards of selectmen and the mayor of New Bedford that have the greatest effect for good or bad, on the future health of Buzzards Bay watershed. The management plan also took a watershed approach, and stressed the importance in protecting freshwater wetlands and important upland habitat, both to protect those resources, and to help protect the bay itself.

After the Management Plan was created, the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program moved in a new direction. Our new mission was to implement this plan. We did this through grants and technical assistance. Because most of the management recommendations were directed to local government, our main customers were the municipal officials of Buzzards Bay, and the citizen groups committed to that effort. Our Congressional delegation helped us to succeed because they fought to renew the National Estuary Program, and also helped target funding that brought hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant funds to Buzzards Bay municipalities and non-profits.

We do not undertake this work alone. We have worked closely with two other organizations in particular, both of which originated within our Citizen Advisory Committee. In 1987 this committee broke apart into a group of citizens, who formed the non-profit group, The Coalition for Buzzards Bay, and a group of municipal officials, that later became the non-profit Buzzards Bay Action Committee. The Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program initially provided considerable financial support in getting these two groups off the ground, but today both groups are self-sustaining and now help guide the direction of the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program.

Since the Buzzards Bay CCMP was approved in 1992, more than half the recommendations have been fulfilled, and the management plan has influenced many of the state programs, and contributed to some important changes like the 1996 re-write of the septic system regulations (Title 5), which now include innovations like inspections and upgrades at property transfer, the state septic betterment program, the creation of the Massachusetts Alternative Septic System Test Center, the focus of state grant programs on non-point source pollution and stormwater management, and the improvement in local implementation and enforcement of wetland regulations.

However, as far reaching as the CCMP was for its time, new environmental challenges have arisen, new regulations are in place, and new problems need to be addressed. After 13 years, a new plan is needed that will be as cutting edge, and hard pressing as the first. The old plan helped guide state and federal dollars, technical assistance, and regulations for more than a decade. A new plan will again give local officials and citizens of Buzzards Bay a voice to create new strategies and direction to protect water quality and habitat in Buzzards Bay and its surrounding watershed, and again help direct state and federal resources to these problems.

For these reasons, the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program is embarking on a rewrite of the Buzzards Bay management plan. For our effort to succeed, we need the help of the residents, citizen groups, municipal officials, fisherman, and businessman of Buzzards Bay once again. We will be meeting with these groups to review a new Management Plan draft where we will reaffirm or revise our old goals, and look for new ones.

(1) The original national significance designation of Buzzards Bay, Narragansett Bay, Puget Sound, and Long Island Sound may have been within a 1984 appropriations bill. The funding of such "estuaries of national significance" is illustrated in this 1986 appropriation bill. In response to the haphazard Congressional designation process, in 1984 and 1985 various bills attempted to formalize this designation process. For example in January 1985 the 99th Congress introduced language in a Clean Water Act reauthorization bill (99:HR 8) to create an EPA program, and enable "the Governor of any State to nominate to the Administrator an estuary within their jurisdiction which they believe is of national significance and request a management conference to develop a comprehensive management plan." Competing legislation that year attempted to place the program under NOAA as part of state CZM programs (see 97:HR 2497). Neither of these bills passed, and it was not until two years later that the National Estuary Program was finally created with nearly identical language in a new (1987) Clean Water Act reauthorization bill. By that time, Congress automatically gave 10 estuaries, including Buzzards Bay, priority for inclusion into the program. NOAA did not completely lose out; Congress provided NOAA with a comparable, but more research-oriented program, called the National Estuarine Research Reserve program in 1986.

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