Nutrient pollution in Waquoit and Popponesset Bays has reached a grim new milestone: Both bays now show impaired water quality throughout, with no high-quality areas remaining.
That is the latest assessment by Brian L. Howes, a scientist with the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who has for years worked with the Town of Mashpee and Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe to analyze the impact of nitrogen pollution on local waterways.
âFor the first time in 20 years, I have nothing good to say,â Dr. Howes said during a presentation to the Mashpee Board of Selectmen in the Waquoit Meeting Room at Town Hall on Monday, July 26.
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For more than a decade, nitrogen pollution has degraded the water quality in Popponesset Bay while the Town of Mashpee has continued to permit hundreds of septic systems that are the known source of the pollution.
In a report published earlier this month titled âCape Codâs Polluted Bays: A Decade of Missed Opportunities,â the Conservation Law Foundation counts 648 polluting systems within the Popponesset Bay watershed that have passed inspection or received a permit in the past five to 10 years.
Those 648 septic systems fall within the Town of Mashpee and the Town of Barnstable. The CLF in September announced plans to sue both towns and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to halt septic system installations and inspections.