Vol. 1, No. 4
Headline Back Issues Fall 1997
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Shellfish bed cleanup progressing in New Hampshire
A marine biologist with the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game (NHF&G), Smith said his agency works with the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to manage shellfish areas. Shellfish harvesting licenses cost $21 per season. "It's discouraging to people who buy licenses that they have such limited opportunity to use them," he observed. Hampton Harbor's shellfish resources consist mostly of softshell clams, while the Great Bay Estuary has oyster beds and some softshell clam flats. Smith qualified the latter as marginal in quality. The fact that some sites in both locations have been reopened to harvesting indicates cleanup efforts are working, according to Chris Nash, director of the New Hampshire Estuaries Project (NHEP), an organization working to improve the environmental quality of the state's estuaries. NHEP includes municipalities, regional planners, non-governmental organizations, commercial fishermen, and businesses, such as Public Service Company of New Hampshire/Northeast Utilities. New Hampshire's shellfish resources are too limited for commercial harvesting, so only recreational harvesting is allowed, Nash said. Nevertheless, Fish and Game occasionally finds people poaching shellfish from closed areas at night for personal consumption or illegal sale. "They'll go to great lengths to evade us, to the point of jumping into the water and swimming away from us in the winter time," said Fish and Game Conservation Officer Tim McClare. Shellfish poaching can carry hefty fines and even jail time. Layers of pollution Population growth along the state's 18-mile/29-kilometer coastline in the 1980s overloaded local sewage treatment plants, increasing fecal contamination of shellfish waters, said Nash. Hampton Harbor's clam flats were closed around 1988 when DHHS determined that the water there was unsafe for purposes of shellfish consumption. Residents complained about the closings, prompting state legislators to urge the state Department of Environmental Services to address pollution from municipal wastewater treatment plants and other sources. More than $100 million was devoted to these projects, according to Nash. Subsequently, bacteria levels in the water dropped, yet runoff and leaky septic systems continued to contaminate the shellfish areas, which remained closed to harvesting. In 1993, as communities continued to criticize the closings, then-governor Steve Merrill directed the Office of State Planning (OSP) to work with other agencies to determine if Hampton Harbor's clam flats could be reopened. A committee representing state agencies, University of New Hampshire scientists, and state and federal elected officials later replaced by NHEP determined that certain flats appeared safe for harvesting in dry weather, but that too little information was available for a definitive conclusion. A year-long series of studies resulted in the 1993 and 1994 reopenings of three of the five closed flats in Hampton Harbor with certain conditions. The flats are open two days a week, closed during the summer to conserve the resource, and if rainfall accumulates to more than one tenth of an inch, the flats close for five days to allow contamination from runoff to be flushed out and for the filter-feeding shellfish to cleanse themselves. NHEP has since contracted the citizens' group Great Bay Watch to work with the state to research whether the tenth-of-an-inch of rainfall criterion can be raised. Once the town of Seabrook finishes installing sewer lines to replace old, leaky septic systems near the harbor's most popular clamming area, water quality should improve, perhaps enough so that site can reopen, said Nash. Research and cleanup efforts have also led to some openings in Great Bay Estuary, he said. Upper Little Bay reopened in 1996, as a result of work undertaken by several state agencies and UNH/Jackson Estuarine Laboratory. NHEP is continuing to investigate other potential openings in the Great Bay Estuary, and is working with local property owners and towns to conduct extensive sanitary surveys in search of sources of pollution fouling coastal rivers. More sections of Little Bay will likely be opened soon, and areas along the Bellamy River could be opened once pollution sources are removed, said Nash. With the opening of Upper Little Bay, most areas once closed due to lack of information rather than actual pollution are now open. Some polluted areas, however, are still being examined to determine the source of the pollution, or are being cleaned up, said Nash. "I think things are going reasonably well," he commented, but acknowledged that for those wanting to harvest shellfish, "things can never go quickly enough." |
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Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine
Hampton, New Hampshire -- Recent openings of clam flats in Hampton Harbor and Great Bay Estuary indicate that water quality in New Hampshire's estuaries is improving. "We're trying to get more information in hopes that the data will be useful in opening more flats for longer periods of time," said Bruce Smith, as he reached over the side of a flat-bottomed motor boat to collect a weekly water sample from a choppy Hampton Harbor one fall afternoon.