Vol. 1, No. 2
Headline Back Issues
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Partnerships across Gulf of Maine working to preserve resources in watershed... (cont'd) Maine: "So much of our area was closed for so many years people gave up clamming. It's just beginning to catch on again," said Sherman Hoyt, organizer of the Georges River Clam Project. Hoyt, who works out of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension's Waldoboro office, became involved in efforts to reopen the clam beds in 1995. He explained that harvesting clams from tidal mud flats, a mainstay of coastal life, was off limits for nearly eight years in the St. George Estuary in Knox County, Maine. Approximately 2,000 acres (809 hectares) of clam flat habitat had been closed by the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) due to pollution. Hoyt noted that 90 percent of the productive clam acreage in the river was lost between 1988 and 1993, which led to over- harvesting in other areas. But with help from the Georges River Clam Project, including some financial support from the Gulf of Maine Council, clamming is making a slow comeback, as more than half of the closed acreage is now open. The closures have caused significant loss to the communities around the Georges River estuary, which saw annual landings drop from $1.5 million in the 1970s and early 1980s to $100,000 in the mid 1990s. Some organizations had already been working since 1988 to make water quality improvements, aggressively targeting the biggest single source, the Thomaston Municipal Treatment Plant, which was connected to storm drains that regularly overflowed during storms. "The Tidewater Association was beginning to turn things around, but there were no major openings until July of '96," noted Hoyt. No one of the five towns in the affected area -- Cushing, Warren, Thomaston, South Thomaston and Saint George -- was prepared to address the daunting issue alone, said Hoyt, so "we tried to bring the five municipalities together to cooperatively manage the fishery." Groups including the George's River Tidewater Association, and Partners in Monitoring, along with DMR and the Maine State Planning Office worked with the towns, clammers, and fishermen to identify problems causing the closures. "To partner a group of local communities with the state to help with fisheries management makes a lot of sense. Everybody's a stakeholder in this fishery and they all have mandates that need to be met," said Hoyt. "Last spring's goal was to get an ordinance passed in each town to say the towns wanted control over shellfish management. That gave us the authority to hire a warden and share management with the state," he said. Now, a Georges River Clam management plan has been developed by clammers and approved by DMR to monitor harvests, control licenses, and oversee reseeding -- reintroducing clams to flats. "We're looking for a sustainable fishery," said Hoyt. "We're shooting for 10,000 bushels (352,390 liters) this year and are hoping to sustain that year after year and see where we go from there." The Georges River Clam Project has made progress, but Hoyt added, "The big test is to keep this going." Massachusetts: "It's a perfect example of how we're all supposed to work together," said Duxbury Conservation Administrator Joe Grady about a partnership effort to eliminate a pollution source that was contaminating the town's shellfish beds along the Bluefish River. According to Grady, town officials, residents, community organizations, business owners, and state agencies joined forces to solve Duxbury's long-standing pollution problem. Duxbury does not have a town-wide sewage system. Bill Clark, technical advisor for Massachusetts Bays Program, which is administered by the state's Coastal Zone Management Office, said three turn-of-the-century homes built on salt marshes with their septic systems on or near "extremely productive shellfish beds" were polluting the river. When the state closed the beds, it cost the town thousands of dollars in lost harvests, he said. But since December, a new sewage system has pumped wastewater from the three homes to an upland site, safely away from the Bluefish River. Wastewater from a commercial site in town, which was also causing pollution problems, is now pumped to another upland site. Most of the rest of the town still uses on-site septic systems. Officials expect the shellfish beds to be given a clean bill of health by the state within a year. Local officials were extremely driven to complete the project, according to Grady, who said they spoke to local civic groups and held public hearings where engineers thoroughly reviewed all the alternatives. "That's the way you have to do these things if you do them right. You don't just dump these things on town meeting floor. You always have to go back to the first chapter," he said. The campaign paid off. According to Grady, voters at town meeting unanimously approved $150,000 for construction of the sewage system, authorizing selectmen to assess betterment fees to recover all or part of construction costs. The project was, according to Clark, "an extremely cooperative venture" between the town's public works and land use departments, along with the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Mass-achusetts Bays Program, private business owners, and the South Shore Conservatory of Music, which allowed the town to connect to its new sewage system. But, noted Grady, "It didn't always run smoothly, believe me." The town had attempted to undertake the project several years earlier, but its application was turned down. The alternative, said Ruth Rowley, Duxbury board of health chair, would have been for the town to take the homes by eminent domain, resulting in a significant loss of tax revenues, not to mention goodwill. Luckily, it didn't come to that. "It was a real example of how, if the leadership makes it possible for citizens to accomplish what needs to be done to protect the environment at a level they can afford to pay," they will support those efforts, said Rowley. "All of the property owners knew there wasn't anything they could do alone -- if they couldn't meet [septic regulations], they couldn't sell their property. And most want to protect the environment and didn't feel good about pollution. When you can see raw sewage in your harbor area then you know you've got something amiss," she said. New Brunswick: The offices of the St. Croix Estuary Project (SCEP) are in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. But the organization also has one foot planted across the river in Calais, Maine, bringing interests from Canada and the US together on behalf of the international river, which drains into the Gulf of Maine. According to SCEP Program Director Rob Rainer, members of the SCEP partnership include more than 100 organizations from federal, state, and provincial agencies to municipal governments, local nonprofit organizations, businesses, and others that have a stake in the future of the St. Croix estuary area. SCEP was founded 1992 in response to Canada's federal Atlantic Coastal Action Program (ACAP), which encourages communities to address local environmental or other issues and provides them with seed money for those efforts. Rainer noted that aside from those initial funds, communities have to find other money for their projects. SCEP has received funding from the New Brunswick Environmental Trust Fund for work in nonpoint source pollution, and from the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment for sediment sampling, he noted. Rainer anticipates that the group will have to spend much more time fundraising in the future. SCEP addresses a comprehensive list of issues relating to the health of the St. Croix river system, including water quality, habitat protection, and ecotourism. Currently, SCEP is working to secure funding to purchase a 330-acre (133.5-hectare) shoreline property that would provide public coastal access. "It would be a fantastic place to go for outdoor recreation -- a real asset to the communities, if it can be protected," Rainer said. Among the group's past successes are its water quality program, which monitored the effects of treated wastewater on streams and clam flats from 1993-1995; completion of a major coastal resources mapping project for all of coastal Charlotte county and the US side of the St. Croix estuary, resulting in creation of a coastal resources atlas; and development of an extensive management plan and companion document, both released in April. Rainer recommends that groups hoping to complete projects successfully identify clear goals and objectives, along with indicators that will tell participants how their work is progressing. In a partnership involving many diverse members, "group cohesion is difficult. But if people have respect for each other and fundamental interest in forming the group, you're off to a good start," he said. Rainer emphasized, however, that "You need a core group that can function as unit to move things along in the early stages without a lot of hiccups." Then, once established, "The group itself and community have to drive the process." New Hampshire: The most straightforward way to preserve important wildlife habitat may be to purchase it outright. But few preservation organizations have the financial means to buy all the land they would like to protect. Recently, however, the Great Bay Resource Protection Partnership, based in Durham, New Hampshire, was able to do just that, thanks to cooperation from numerous partners. According to Partnership Director Dea Brickner-Wood, several groups first organized in 1994 to apply to the North American Wetlands Conservation Council seeking funding assistance to acquire approximately 600 acres (243 hectares) of wetlands and uplands within the Crommet Creek watershed for protection and restoration work. The area contains important waterfowl habitat. Success in gathering the funds necessary to purchase the property led to formal organization of the partnership in fall of 1995. Members of the partnership include the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Audubon Society of New Hampshire, Ducks Unlimited, US Fish & Wildlife Service, the Nature Conservancy, the Great Bay Estuarine Research Reserve, the New Hampshire Fish & Game Department, and the towns of Durham and Newmarket, New Hampshire. The partners' first action was to develop a habitat protection plan identifying other areas in need of protection, said Brickner-Wood. She said she expects the partnership to expand to include other municipalities and conservation organizations in the Great Bay, along with local citizens. Of the Crommet Creek purchase, Brickner-Wood said, "That success really gave people the fire to say, Hey, we can do this, we can do this in the Great Bay." Brickner-Wood attributed the success to the fact that all of the partners were willing to share their resources. "Everyone sees this as an opportunity to get the last unfragmented pieces of habitat left in the Great Bay area," she said, adding, "A very key element is the linking up with the communities and the local and regional non-profit groups, because that's what's going to make it work. Our efforts are in coordination with them and will be expanding." That strategy is being praised as a model for other such efforts. The EPA recently recognized the partnership with an Environmental Merit Award. Peter Wellenberger, manager of the Great Bay Estuarine Research Reserve, who traveled to Boston to accept the award, said the coalition's success demonstrates how groups can successfully undertake large acquisition projects even in a time of reduced government funding. Brickner-Wood noted that since it's out of the question to purchase every piece of important land, public education and public policy must play a big role in protecting waterfowl and wildlife habitat resources. Great Bay partnership has a prominent role to play in those activities as well, she said, adding, "I think this has a lot of promising components." Nova Scotia: Fundy Fixed Gear Council As part of the Fundy Fixed Gear Council, fishermen on the Bay of Fundy side of Nova Scotia are working with each other and with other groups to develop community- and ecosystem-based management policies that promote sustainable use of their fishery. "Fixed gear" refers to fishing methods such as hook-and-line, hand-lining, long-lining, and gill-netting that do not use mobile gear (like trawlers or draggers). "What we're about is trying to create a sustainable fishery that brings the maximum benefit to coastal communities for this area," said Arthur Bull, chair of the year-old organization. Last year was the fishery's first attempt at self-management for an entire season, and it lasted from mid-May to mid-Autumn, he said. Bull explained that the council includes three fishermen's associations: the Maritime Fishermen's Union (MFU) Gill Net Society, the Islands In-Shore Fishermen's Association, and the Bay of Fundy In-shore Fishermen's Association. "I think our biggest accomplishment has to do with participation of fishermen in terms of people getting involved with the council. The thing is really driven by this democratic structure and there's been a really high level of participation at every level," Bull stated. All fixed-gear fishermen in the area must sign a contract with the council if they want to fish within its community-based fishing plan. Otherwise, they can fish in accordance with the government-regulated plan. The community-based management allows fishermen to take into account the Bay of Fundy's unusually high tides, and other local factors in setting restrictions and quotas. "We can adjust according to what's really going on in the water and sometimes prolong the season. We have a very small amount of fish because of the collapse of groundfish stocks. We're trying to keep as many people in the fishery as we can, and keep the fishery viable with a small amount of fish." he said. But despite the council's focus on the Bay of Fundy, it sees that as a component of a much larger system. "What we're doing is only going to make sense if it fits into a greater context of coastal zone management, which isn't related to just one gear type in one particular sector. There needs to be a more integrated approach to fisheries management that we need to be a part of," he said In addition to working on management issues, the organization also works in partnership with government agencies and scientists on research projects, having received a Gulf of Maine Council grant to help support those efforts. Ten research projects are under way now, including mapping spawning grounds, said Bull. Bull says the council is successful at its work because of its democratic nature. Also, he added, "It's easy to create partnerships with people involved in economic development, environmentalism, and science, because sustainability is common ground for all of them." |
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Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine