|
What are
estuaries?
 |
View Estuary Prioritization List
|
View Additional Project Documents
Estuaries
are special bodies of water occurring when the sea extends inland and
meets the mouth of a
river or streams. The estuaries of Southeastern Massachusetts - the
harbors and bays of Cape Cod, Buzzards Bay and the Islands - are
ecosystems that provide home and habitat for shellfish and sea grasses and
breeding grounds for important commercial offshore marine fisheries. Rapid
population growth over several decades has created an abundance of
nutrients that have leached into the estuaries through ground and surface
waters. Nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, act as a fertilizer to
aquatic plants. The result: changes in water quality and the buildup of
invasive weed and algal growth causing fish kills, closed beaches,
destroyed productive shellfish areas and creating aesthetically
displeasing waters that adversely affect the valuable tourist industry and
coastal property values. |
|
What is
the Massachusetts Estuaries Program?
The Massachusetts Estuaries Project effort will begin to fix this problem
by determining all of the factors specific to each estuary that are
causing the problem. Project partners will determine the geographic area
contributing nutrients to a specific estuary, determine what the nutrient
sources are, what the nutrient load is, and how great a nutrient load the
estuaries can tolerate without dramatically changing their character and
usages. In most cases, returning the estuaries to the water quality
condition that support sensitive shellfish habitats and lush eel grass
beds, it will be necessary to remove a significant percentage of the
nutrient loadings coming from an estuary's watershed. Nutrient removal may
come primarily in the form wastewater treatment and secondarily through
storm water management programs including of limited use of lawn
fertilizers. In some scenarios, changing the water flow within an estuary
to increase flushing may compliment nutrient reduction and removal
efforts.
This project will provide water quality, nutrient loading, and
hydrodynamic information for 89 estuaries in Southeastern Massachusetts.
This information will be combined through the use of a linked
watershed/estuary model that will predict the water quality changes that
will result from land use management decisions. Over the next six years a
report for each of the 89 estuaries will evaluate several water quality
conditions and how that relates to the health of the estuary and the land
use changes necessary to bring about that improvement. This project is a
collaborative effort by two state agencies, the Executive Office of
Environmental Affairs (through the Department of Environmental Protection)
and the University of Massachusetts's School of Marine Science and
Technology and is subsidized by funding that allows communities to
undertake this evaluation at approximately 40 percent of the actual cost.
View
Estuary Prioritization List |