Talk to anyone who lives in Rhode Island, and it’s likely they could tell you a story connected to Narragansett Bay, says Mike Jarbeau, “baykeeper” for Save The Bay Inc.
If not the bay itself, at least one of its many tributaries extending like a web across significant portions of the state.
The stories often include personal connections and deep ties to the local economy, ranging from shipbuilding to shellfishing.
“It really, truly is a part of all of us, so when you look at the major economies of Rhode Island, it always makes its way back to the bay in one way or another,” said Jarbeau, who as baykeeper identifies and responds to environmental threats.
Those stories and perceptions about Narragansett Bay have shifted in recent years.
For generations, the upper reaches of the bay, and the Providence River in particular, have been considered places not to swim and not to harvest shellfish, places for cargo ships and ports filled with piles of scrap metal, the water highly polluted by industry and by untreated sewage and toxic urban stormwater.
But things are changing.
In more recent times, Rhode Islanders’ thoughts of the bay have turned much cleaner.
Massive underground tunnels constructed by the Narragansett Bay Commission have allowed more stormwater to be captured and stored for later treatment instead of being allowed to flow contaminated into the bay when storms overwhelm treatment plants. That investment has paid off.
State officials say Narragansett Bay is the cleanest it has been in 150 years, and that has led to other developments unthinkable just a few decades ago.
Case in point: In September, the R.I. Department of Environmental Management opened about 1,900 acres of clam beds between Gaspee Point and Conimicut Point for harvesting after being prohibited for more than 75 years because of pollution.
At the same time, East Providence Mayor Roberto L. DaSilva announced his intention to create a public beach for swimming in the Riverside section of the city, just a few miles from the Fields Point Wastewater Treatment Facility in Providence, the state’s largest.
In the early 1900s, the area known as Crescent Beach was a tourist destination, along with the adjacent Crescent Park. But the amusement park was dismantled long ago, and the beach became a place where heaps of garbage washed ashore and was largely forgotten by residents.
Now DaSilva sees it as an attraction again, thanks to the increased water quality and dramatic improvements to access along the shoreline.
But while there has been an increased opportunity for recreation and tourism, the improved water quality has raised some unexpected questions, too.
Some who make a living fishing on the bay say efforts to cleanse the water of organic matter may have had unintended consequences for the aquatic life found there. They say a lack of nitrogen in the water related to the cleaner wastewater may have led to fish kills and declining numbers of shellfish.
“What we do see as a concern is that the bay has become almost crystal clear,” said Fred Mattera, executive director of the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island. “But these aren’t swimming pools. These are ecosystems, and actually, the soupier it is with a lot of life, the better.”
[caption id="attachment_452294" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
FARMHANDS: A Roger Williams University shellfish research team tends to its aquaculture equipment on the waterfront near its Bristol campus. The team includes, from left, Hisham Abdelrahman, assistant professor of marine biology; Susanna Osinski, shellfish field operations manager; and Kristen Savastano, shellfish research assistant.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
PROPERTIES OF WATER
In many ways, the bay – as mistreated as it has been in the past – is the lifeblood of the state.
The 147-square-mile body of water, a massive gash carved out by a glacier 18,000 years ago, plays an enormous role in Rhode Island’s economy, in areas such as aquaculture and shellfishing; beach use, recreational boating and fishing, and tourism; commercial fishing; defense industry; transportation; maritime trade; and research and education.
Indeed, an economic study conducted by the Coastal Institute at the University of Rhode Island in 2019 found that 13 industries use resources provided by Narragansett Bay and its watershed, businesses that employ more than 97,000 people and represent about $14 billion in revenue and expenditures.
Tourism-related businesses accounted for 73% of that cash flow.
And a cleaner bay can only bolster the tourism sector, says Jennifer McCann, director of U.S. Coastal Programs at URI’s Coastal Resources Center.
In addition to water quality allowing the state and waterfront communities to open more beaches to recreational activities, the bay’s cleanliness has also strengthened Rhode Island’s reputation as a global sailing capital, McCann says, and it might be a draw that ultimately attracts more companies and workers through quality-of-life metrics.
“If there are blue-tech companies we’re trying to attract to Rhode Island, and other maritime companies … the fact that you can go surfing or swimming in the morning, then be within your office within minutes or hours is attractive,” McCann said. “There are people who want to live in a place where there is clean water and access to our coasts and ocean, so it’s attracting a high-level workforce.”
The effects of a cleaner bay can be felt for property owners, too, researchers say.
A team led by Emi Uchida, a professor and chair of the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at URI, as well as associate director of the Coastal Institute, completed a study in 2017 that concluded the combined value of homes in coastal communities around Narragansett Bay could increase by between $18 million and $136 million, depending on the level of improved water quality.
And that could have indirect ripple effects.
“Rising property values could mean consumers are willing to spend more on goods and services, benefiting local businesses in the blue economy, including seafood and maritime sectors, local tourism and restaurants,” Uchida said.
Additionally, these housing market fluctuations impact municipal property tax revenues, which go on to influence public services.
There could also be a negative impact, Uchida says.
Rising values also mean that fewer properties will be affordable, impacting who can live in the coastal areas, “leading to equity issues, as well as tightening the labor market, making it more difficult for local businesses to hire people,” she said.
Christian Cowan, executive director of both the University of Rhode Island Research Foundation and 401 Tech Bridge, says Narragansett Bay is a crucial part of the development of the state’s blue economy, which researchers have valued at $5 billion.
He points to the Grow Blue Partnership, an initiative led by URI that seeks these sustainable uses of ocean resources for economic growth. Part of that initiative is to develop Narragansett Bay into a “smart bay,” where undersea and maritime technologies can be invented, prototyped and tested.
The bay has already become a crucial test bed for companies such as Regent Craft Inc. in North Kingstown, which is testing sea gliders for mass production, and Bristol-based Jaia Robotics Inc., which makes underwater drones for data collection.
“There’s an incredible interest in ocean health and Narragansett Bay health,” Cowan said. “It’s all super critical.”
In fact, he says some of the work of companies such as Jaia and Newport-based , which in part studies the effects of human activities on the sea floor, has been brought to bear in the bay.
“Our ability to study and understand the health of Narragansett Bay has increased because of the technological innovation in a totally different way than we have in the past,” Cowan said.
THE CLEANUP
It’s been a long road to reach current water quality levels in Narragansett Bay, Jarbeau said, but in short, it comes down to the federal Clean Water Act of 1972, which set the groundwork for regulating water-quality standards and limitations on pollutant discharges.
Prior to the Clean Water Act, “the rivers that feed into the bay, and the bay itself, [were used as] a convenient place to dispose of industrial chemicals and waste,” he said, “and that was the norm for decades before people realized those pollutants don’t just flow into the ocean and go away – they have a big impact on the bay’s health overall.”
While the Clean Water Act didn’t eliminate all pollutants, significant impacts on water quality now occur in more-isolated instances, Jarbeau says.
Higher levels of cleanliness have been reached as the Narragansett Bay Commission, a nonprofit public agency formed in 1980 to provide wastewater collection and treatment services to 10 municipalities, improved how stormwater is managed in urban areas.
In 2008, the commission completed a 3-mile-long combined sewer overflow tunnel under Providence that stores stormwater for treatment later. Another phase of the project added more tunnels, and a third phase is underway now with the construction of a storage tunnel under Pawtucket.
Once the $1.5 billion project is complete, the commission estimates the amount of time shellfishing areas are closed following rainstorms will be reduced by 68% in the upper bay and 95% in the lower bay.
HARVEST TIME
Indeed, key parts of the blue economy – particularly aquaculture and fishing – have a lot riding on the cleanliness of the bay.
While the state’s aquaculture industry remains small, it is growing quickly, according to the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council.
A 2022 CRMC report said 84 farms – employing 246 full- and part-time workers – grew products valued at $8.3 million in 2022, up 11.2% from the $7.5 million the years before. And the farms are harvesting more than just oysters and mussels. CRMC noted that farmers are trying new crops such as sugar kelp, soft-shell clams and bay scallops.
A significant portion of the 374 acres under cultivation is located in the salt ponds along the state’s southern coast, but there are many scattered aquaculture farms scattered throughout Narragansett Bay, as far north as Warwick.
The Coastal Institute’s 2019 economic study highlighted that more areas have been opened to aquaculture in recent years because of the improved water quality, but it also warned that aquaculture can be susceptible to pollutants, which has led to the temporary closure of farms at various times.
The livelihood of shellfishermen is closely tied to the quality of the bay water. Even with the CSO tunnels storing stormwater, after heavy rainfall, large sections of the upper bay are closed for days because of the dangers of contaminated storm runoff.
Armed with a bull rake to dig clams out of the muck on the bay floor, quahoggers typically work alone on small boats, bent over the side as they rake the bottom.
Michael McGiveney, president of the Rhode Island Shellfisherman’s Association, has been one of those quahoggers for more than four decades. He has mixed feelings about what he’s seeing on the water now.
McGiveney says the number of quahogs living in the bay has declined, but the reasons aren’t clear.
At the industry’s high point decades ago, as many as 1,000 people could be found on the water harvesting clams, but now it’s down to 150 to 200 people as the size of harvests has declined, state officials say.
McGiveney believes he knows what the problem is: While efforts to clean the bay have led to a drop in harmful fecal coliform bacteria levels, McGiveney says nitrogen levels have also been lowered, which has brought fish kills and a reduction of nutrients needed for quahogs to thrive.
CAUSE AND EFFECT
It’s true that nitrogen levels in the bay have drastically decreased over time, says Hisham Abdelrahman, an aquaculture extension specialist and assistant professor of marine biology at Roger Williams University.
A recent study by the Narragansett Bay Commission found a 35% nitrogen reduction between 2006, the first year of full measurements, through the end of 2022. But it’s less certain that low nitrogen is the main culprit behind fish kills, Abdelrahman says, adding that multiple factors likely contribute.
Abdelrahman points to a 2020 study by researchers with the Environmental Protection Agency. The study, which investigated the impact of nitrogen levels on quahog growth in Narragansett Bay, found that even when levels were reduced by as much as about 50%, quahogs weren’t significantly affected.
“It might not just be nitrogen, or it might not be nitrogen at all,” Abdelrahman said. His research team is working to gain a deeper understanding of this question.
And they’re not alone.
On Oct. 24, a special legislative commission held a hearing to discuss the decline in clams with scientists, quahoggers and other stakeholders, including Abdelrahman and Jarbeau.
At the meeting, M. Conor McManus, a biologist and chief of DEM’s Division of Marine Fisheries, noted that since improvements to water quality opened additional areas of the upper bay to shellfishing in 1982, quahog harvests underwent “dramatic declines,” McManus said, dropping from more than 4 million pounds of quahogs to below 500,000.
But Narragansett Bay isn’t unique in this decline, McManus said, pointing out that other areas in the Northeast are seeing similar trends among shellfish. Some scientists have hypothesized that this larger shift stems from climate change, McManus said, and harvesting, itself, has historically contributed to quahog decline. But at the moment, there’s not enough research to pin down an exact reason for quahog decreases in the Northeast, McManus said.
Despite the uncertainties about the effects of the water quality on the aquatic life, McGiveney also acknowledges he and his fellow quahoggers have reason to celebrate a cleaner Narragansett Bay.
Over the years, it’s led to the easing of restrictions on so-called “conditional areas” of the upper bay.
That includes the section that had been closed for more than 75 years known as “Area E” on the mostly southern third of the Providence River. That area opened in the spring of 2021, followed this spring by a large swath of water in adjoining Mount Hope Bay that had been closed for years.
McGiveney says Area E is only open for clamming on certain days and only for three-hour stretches in the morning. But because the clam beds had been untouched for so long, that has been enough time for him and other quahoggers to rake in their legal catch limit of clams.
The eased restrictions have given a boost to the flagging shellfishing industry. In 2022, more than 17.7 million quahogs were harvested from the bay and the rest of the state’s coastal waters, according to DEM – a 9% increase from the year before.
“You don’t want an ecosystem that’s like a swimming pool,” McGiveney said. “But in fairness, what the Narragansett Bay Commission has done with their wastewater system improvements has allowed us to go to areas that have been closed permanently.”
