Mass. helping R.I. bay water quality

PUMPED UP: Ken Hilton, vice president of Standish Boat Yard, pumps out sewage for one of the slip's boats. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
PUMPED UP: Ken Hilton, vice president of Standish Boat Yard, pumps out sewage for one of the slip's boats. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

For years, efforts by Rhode Island regulators to clean up Narragansett Bay have been hampered by the state’s neighbor to the north and east. Thus, despite a 14-year ban on discharging boat sewage into Rhode Island waters, untreated discharge could legally be dumped in Mount Hope Bay in Massachusetts and find its way down into the Ocean State. Until now, that is.
With its June 29 approval of the Massachusetts’ request to designate Mount Hope Bay as a no-discharge area, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken a major step to improving the quality of recreational use of Narragansett Bay.
Establishing the zone has had the widespread support of the surrounding communities, including Somerset, Fall River, Freetown, Dighton, Berkley and Swansea. It is also supported by Save The Bay, The Taunton River Watershed Alliance and the Massachusetts Audubon Society. The reason is simple: Studies by the EPA, the Mass. Executive Office of Environmental Affairs and the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program have documented the negative effects of poor Mt. Hope Bay water flowing into Narragansett Bay, creating the necessity for change.
With the approval, the discharge of any treated or untreated boat sewage is prohibited in the Taunton River north to the Center Street bridge on the Dighton-Berkley border, as well as the Lee and Cole Rivers, up to Route 6. In total, the area is about 9 square miles.
Accomplishing the task has been a generation-long process, as the Bay State supported the building of land-based pump-out facilities as well as the purchase of pump-out vessels before requesting the federally approved designation. And it stands in stark contrast to Rhode Island’s approach, which was to ask for the no-discharge designation in 1998, five years after the federal government created the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Sportfish Restoration Program to help states finance the treatment infrastructure necessary to ensure compliance with the designation. Through the program, approved grant applications are eligible for a 75 percent match of the first $75,000 of a project (which must be budgeted for a minimum of $70,000). Through the years, Rhode Island has received $2.12 million in federal funding, money that has helped public and private entities build 70 pump-out facilities. Massachusetts has been active in capturing the federal money as well to the tune of $16.3 million, with nearly 120 pump-out facilities across the state and 102 pump-out vessels, more than any other state, says Thomas Beaulieu, program coordinator for the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, which administers the program through the Clean Vessel Act program that is administered by the Mass. Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Marine Fisheries.
“We have spent a lot of time working with the communities and assisting them with the grants,” he said, adding that grants have been offered for the last 10 years. Still the state did not feel the need to declare Mt. Hope Bay a no-discharge zone until Fall River had invested $185 million in the combined sewer overflow project for the city’s wastewater and stormwater systems in an effort to upgrade Mt. Hope Bay, a project that began in 2009. To allow boaters to continue to dump raw sewage overboard didn’t make sense to the administration.
In preparation for the designation, the city acquired a new pump-out boat this past spring for $107,000, which will help meet the demand of the area’s estimated 400 boats.
In Somerset, the town recently received funding from the program and installed a shoreside pump-out facility at the town’s School Street boat ramp on the Taunton River. In addition it is using a new pump-out vessel, according to Dennis F. Luttrell, Somerset town administrator. “We had two boats that were in bad need of repair. This is a big improvement. We’ve been in the lead with this for quite some time. For many years, ours was the first and only boat in Mt. Hope Bay and the Taunton River.” Luttrell has even gone so far as to appear before Congress on behalf of the bill that funds the grant program. “We are still paying for 25 percent of the grant improvements, and the taxpayers have been behind us,” he said.
For the forseeable future, the Somerset and Fall River facilities will be the only pump-outs in the bay. None are planned for those towns north of the Charles M. Braga Jr. Memorial Bridge.
Based on experience, it seems unlikely that the new Massachusetts capabilities will be enough to handle demand.
In nearby Tiverton, Kenneth Hilton Jr., president of Standish Boat Yard Inc., has run a land-based pump-out facility for about 12 years, thanks in part to Rhode Island’s grant program that financed 75 percent of the improvement.
At a cost of $5 per boat, unless it is more than 30 gallons, charged at a pro-rated fee, the service is a minor money generator. However, Hilton believes it is very possible the new classification will spur new customers that might also desire ancillary services. “We do a lot of business with pump-outs with Massachusetts people because we’re the easiest marina to get into – we are more wide open in the basin,” he said. “We also have three sides on the fuel dock, which makes things easier. For example, we already know that some of our customers are from Borden Light Marina in Fall River. You recognize them.”
With more waterways under state jurisdiction than Rhode Island, Mt. Hope Bay is not the only waterway being improved. Since 2007, Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s administration has declared nine EPA-approved no-discharge areas.
According to David S. Janik, south coastal regional coordinator for the CZM, the piecemeal approach of declaring such zones has been successful because the EPA ensures adequate facilities are in place prior to the declaration. The approach was different from Rhode Island’s, which in August 1998 became the first state in the nation to receive EPA’s no-discharge designation for all its coastal marine waters (at that time the EPA did not require that pump-out facilities be in place before the designation was made). Repeated closing of shellfish beds close to marinas because of water-quality concerns drove the state to seek a more-immediate solution, and neither closing shellfish beds or ending marina expansions seemed to be the answer. The DEM came to the conclusion that a coast-wide declaration would address both issues.
Through the years, to help with compliance, the R.I. Department of Environmental Management has issued grants so that the state has both public and private pump-out facility infrastructure. The agency also has worked with local marinas in an informal arrangement to help achieve no-discharge improvements.
“We have about 70 pump-out facilities throughout the state,” said Joseph Migliore, principal environmental scientist for DEM’s Office of Water Resources. “Right now we are in a maintenance mode. It’s going strong, but it isn’t as active on the construction side as it used to be,” he said.
Migliore said new facilities have recently been added in Bullock’s Point Cove in Barrington and several systems were rebuilt in Cranston. His department still receives a few grant requests each year and does his very best to accommodate them.
“If they apply for that kind of item, we will be more than happy to consider the grant,” he said. “We encourage every marina out there to apply for a grant,” he said.
Migliore estimates about $600,000 of federal money is still available for Rhode Island, but it can disappear quickly if an organization requests a pump-out boat.
As anticipated, Save The Bay welcomed the news. “We’ve been advocating for this designation for a long time, so we’re thrilled to see it now in place,” said Rose Amoros, director of marketing and communications. •

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