With environmental pressures on Great Bay rising and funds to deal with them shrinking, stakeholders rally to come up with solutions.

The scientific facts are straightforward: Nitrogen loads in the Great Bay Estuary are increasing. As a result, eelgrass habitat, oyster and clam populations, and water quality and clarity are declining.  

And, despite the well-intended efforts of numerous organizations and agencies, the problem continues to get worse. Population growth and development are exacerbating the environmental pressures on the bay.

Nearly 1,500 acres of impervious surfaces are added to the watershed each year, boosting the flow of stormwater runoff that carries pollutants into the water. Scientists predict climate change will lead to increased precipitation, which will compound runoff issues.

What’s more, since the financial crisis hit more than three years ago, funding to combat these problems has become increasingly scarce. And, with the economic forecast calling for more hard times in 2012, that’s not about to change.

All these factors have added urgency to a situation that needs to be addressed quickly, before the damage to Great Bay reaches irreparable levels. That’s why the Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership recently launched the Great Bay Dialogue Initiative. The idea is to foster communication, coordination and collaboration between the varied groups working to restore Great Bay’s water quality.

“Let’s not create a new organization, but let’s look at how we tie efforts together so that everybody optimizes their efforts,” said Jeff Edelstein, who mediated the first Great Bay Dialogue meeting on Dec. 7.

The meeting, held at Great Bay Community College at Pease Tradeport, drew close to 100 people, most of whom were tied to some organization with a stake in the bay’s health. Representatives from at least eight different groups offered presentations about their efforts to monitor and address the issues Great Bay is facing.

The Great Bay Watershed encompasses a total of 52 communities, 10 of which are in Maine. According to PREP’s 2010 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan, nitrogen load to the Great Bay Estuary has increased by 42 percent over the last five years. That’s largely due to greater stormwater runoff caused by the growth of impervious surfaces and a few years of heavy rainfall.

The problem with nitrogen is that it creates a proliferation of nutrients that give rise to algal blooms, which, in turn, prevent sunlight from penetrating deep into the water. The lack of sunlight kills eelgrass, which provides vital habitat to a wide range of marine organisms. As a result, eelgrass habitat has declined dramatically in Great Bay and disappeared completely from its tidal rivers. 

These stresses led the N.H. Department of Environmental Services to identify the Great Bay Estuary as “impaired” in 2009, which means it requires more stringent regulations than other water networks to maintain water quality standards.

“The science is incontrovertible,” said Paul Stacey, of the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. “We can negotiate outcomes in terms of how much we want to do or how much we want to spend, policies, politics and so forth, but the science is of course deaf and immune to that. It’s going to respond the way it always will—according to the laws of nature, not the laws of man.”

According to Phil Trowbridge of the DES, there are three primary ways nitrogen gets into the bay. One is through “food or feed,” which includes pollutants from wastewater treatment plants and septic systems. Another is through fertilizers from residential lawns, golf courses, athletic fields, farms and other surfaces. The third is from atmospheric pollution.

A common refrain at the Great Bay Dialogue meeting was the need for increased monitoring to identify nitrogen sources. Then, stakeholders can determine the easiest and most cost-effective ways to eliminate the pollution.

Trowbridge said the DES is in the midst of a Great Bay Nitrogen Pollution Source Study, which should be complete by September 2012.

“This is information on septic systems and ball fields and golf courses and things like that that aren’t available now,” he said. “We hope these data layers will be very useful for the other research studies that are happening, and we can all use common data sources.”

At the same time, the DES is working to establish TMDLs, or total maximum daily loads, for the amount of nitrogen that can legally be deposited into the bay. Rather than establishing one TMDL for the entire estuary, Trowbridge said, they will establish specific levels for each of the bay’s 40 smaller watershed areas. But the DES is still a long way from determining appropriate loads, he said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, too, is developing stricter permitting regulations for Great Bay. The EPA is supposed to issue a general permit for municipal stormwater discharges every five years. The last permit was issued in 2003 and technically expired in 2008, but it has been administratively continued since then. The EPA has drawn up a draft for the next permit.

“The final permit has been long delayed. It is our expectation that it will be issued in 2012,” said Susan Murphy of EPA New England.

Murphy said the new permit will crack down on illicit stormwater discharges by requiring specific ordinances against them.

“We’re really trying to focus a lot of attention on illicit discharge detection and elimination,” she said. “They are a huge water quality issue, particularly for nutrients. They have a huge impact, so it’s a real focus under the new permit.”

The permit will also include more stringent requirements for stormwater runoff from construction sites and post-construction management.

The cost of implementing these requirements will be significant, and it will fall primarily on the towns and cities within the watershed, Murphy said.

“We are trying to provide as much technical assistance as we’re able to do, but the cost is going to be on the permittees,” she said.

Limiting nitrogen load from wastewater treatment plants will be another expensive endeavor for local communities. The Great Bay Municipal Coalition, which includes Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter, Newmarket and Rochester, has proposed a plan to upgrade wastewater plants in all five communities to reduce nitrogen output.

“Some of us will have to build brand new plants, which will probably take close to five years. Others, such a Dover, would be able to do some modifications and be in line in a much shorter period of time,” Peschel said.

The cost of these efforts is an especially sensitive issue in a tough economy. But the cost of doing nothing could take an even greater economic toll, as clean water is important to the tourism industry and property values.

One of the ideas pitched at the meeting on Dec. 7 was to create a number of small task force groups to tackle specific action items, including a financial action team charged with determining ways to reduce costs and raise revenue.

Another team could be responsible for promoting state legislation that would establish regulations for fertilizer use around the bay. But state Rep. David Watters (D-Dover) warned that the Republican leaders in Concord would not be receptive to such legislation. He encouraged guests at the meeting to run for office.

“There’s no hope up there,” he said. “We have to have different people representing us.”

According to PREP director Rachel Rouillard, state Rep. Adam Schroedter (R-Newmarket) is in the process of developing legislation to limit fertilizer use. Schroedter could not be reached for comment late last week.
PREP is currently pursuing other initiatives to improve the bay’s health, including oyster restoration and land conservation.

Other groups are engaged in their own projects. Michelle Daley of the University of New Hampshire’s Water Resources Research Center described the Nitrogen Sources and Transport Pathways study, which is aimed at identifying and mapping nitrogen concentrations throughout the watershed. Robert Roseen of the UNH Stormwater Center discussed the Great Bay Municipal Bioretention Program, which will launch next June with the goal of helping municipalities reduce their pollutant loads. Michael Trainque of the Southeast Watershed Alliance described efforts to develop a watershed-wide management and restoration plan. Julia Dundorf of Clean Air-Cool Planet outlined efforts to mitigate the impacts of global warming.

Unifying these and other efforts is one of the chief objectives of the Great Bay Dialogue Initiative. Rouillard said the first meeting was a good start.

“I think that meeting went a long way in establishing a good foundation, and a foundation that’s based on putting together action plans for how we’re going to address these issues,” she said.

What happens next remains to be seen. Rouillard said she and others are in the process of establishing small task force groups, and a second meeting will probably be scheduled in the near future. What she knows for sure is that meaningful action must be taken soon to protect and restore Great Bay’s precious resources.

“We’ve been hearing that from our partners and stakeholders in the community for some time,” Rouillard said.

More information and presentations from the first meeting of the Great Bay Dialogue Initiative can be found at www.prep.unh.edu.