The Day • 7/16/2015
Westerly — Little Narragansett Bay and the lower Pawcatuck River are plagued with high bacteria and nutrient levels, poor tidal flushing, decreased dissolved oxygen levels and thick mats of nuisance algae, prompting a “call to action” by the nonprofit group Save the Bay on Thursday.
“We think it’s important that we ring the bell and pull the communities together with the (nonprofit) community to help protect this resource,” said Jonathan Stone, executive director of Save the Bay, which has been working on Little Narrangansett Bay and the lower Pawcatuck River since 2008.
During a news conference aboard the group’s 45-foot education and research vessel, Elizabeth Morris, as it traveled down the lower Pawcatuck River into the bay, South County Coastkeeper David Prescott urged the towns of Westerly and Stonington and those upriver to work with Save the Bay on a seven-point action plan.
On board for the trip were officials from both towns and representatives of the environmental regulatory agencies for Connecticut and Rhode Island, which share the river and bay.
“The whole point of this trip is to observe the incredible resource we share with Westerly and that Connecticut shares with Rhode Island. It’s two states and two towns, but one community and one river,” said Stonington Selectman Rob Simmons. “It’s really important that the parties on both sides of the river speak with a common voice and adopt policies that are the same.”
The seven-point plan calls for better management of stormwater discharges, increased enforcement of septic system regulations, the encouraging residents to reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides on lawns, and better enforcement of no-discharge zones for boaters.
Additionally, the action plan calls for a flow study of the bay, protection and restoration of river and wetland buffers and increased investments in water quality monitoring.
Prescott said that seven years of water quality testing and dive surveys by Save the Bay have concluded that many and varied pollution sources are stressing the lower river and bay, and that tidal flushing is being restricted by the northwest drift of the Sandy Point barrier beach at the mouth of the bay.
“Sandy Point has moved 300 to 400 feet in the last 45 years,” he said.
Urban development along the lower river, he said, allows stormwater runoff to flow directly over rooftops and pavement into the waterway without being filtered through the ground, carrying with it pollutants and nitrogen-rich fertilizers that feed the growth of the nuisance macroalgae cladophora.
The algae are effectively smothering large swaths of the river and bay bottom, choking out eelgrass and degrading the habitat for marine creatures, Prescott said.
The explosive growth of the algae is also part of the cause of the stinky seaweed problem that has made the Ash Street beach in Stonington Borough unusable, he said.
The beach is covered with a thick mat of decaying eelgrass and other dead marine plants that wash up and get trapped on the small beach.
At one point during the trip, Prescott hauled up a sample of the nuisance algae and took a whiff, after another staff member of Save the Bay had lowered an underwater camera to show how the estuary bottom has become a monoculture — a bed for a single type of plant.
“Obviously this area is very built up, with walls on either side,” he said, as the vessel passed marinas, houses and seawalls that hug the river below downtown Westerly and Pawcatuck. “You will see a lot of storm drains that poke out of the walls. After a major storm, you will see oil sheens, grass clippings and trash coming out of those storm drains, and also a lot of things you can’t see, like bacteria and nutrients.”
Farther downriver, the vessel passed the discharge pipes of the Westerly and Pawcatuck sewage treatments plant, which together empty about 3 million gallons of treated wastewater into the estuary.
Prescott said the plants “do a really good job dealing with bacteria and a fairly good job dealing with nutrients” and are not considered the main source of the poor water quality problems.
Rather, multiple smaller sources cumulatively create a big problem. Among those are waterfowl congregating to be fed by people, untreated stormwater, septic tank runoff and riverbanks bare of filtering vegetation.
He and others noted that the lower river and the bay are important economic and ecological assets to the towns, attracting hundreds of boaters, swimmers, tourists and wildlife.
“This is an incredible resource,” he said. “We’re trying to educate our leaders and the public so the issues don’t get worse.”
