GUEST

A season of surprises as the Waterkeeper

Melissa Paly
Melissa Paly

With a summer season under my belt as the Great Bay – Piscataqua Waterkeeper, I have a secret to admit. When I took this job, I had no idea how much I didn’t know about the estuary I was supposed to be advocating for.

Take the currents, for example. As a sailor and kayaker, I’ve known that a trip from Kittery across the river to Portsmouth – pretty short as the crow flies – can be a nerve-wracking experience. There’s been more than one outing in our small sailboat when the wind died halfway between our mooring in Pepperrell Cove and Fort Constitution in New Castle, the current pushing us into the shipping channel with no breeze to help us out. Then there’s the time I nearly capsized in my kayak when a friend was paddling too close to me. We both got swept into a channel marker and I was pinned between her boat and the huge red metal nun with wild currents swirling alongside.

But I had no idea that those ripping currents at the mouth of the Piscataqua fly just as fiercely all the way the up river, forming standing waves where the water screams past the pilings of the Route 16 bridges over Little Bay, kicking up turbulent eddies right in front of Great Bay Marine where the Waterkeeper boat sits safely in a slip.

A second surprise is just how convoluted the estuary is. I now visualize “my” estuary like an octopus viewed from above, with seven tentacles spreading out through 52 communities in Maine and New Hampshire. The tentacles meet in Little Bay and Great Bay forming the oddly bulbous body and head. Whereas before I would drive blithely over the many bridges that crisscross the region, I now travel around thinking about where I am – not in terms of route numbers and town names – but in relation to what river I’m near and how it’s connected to the system as a whole.

Yet another revelation is just how vulnerable the Great Bay – Piscataqua estuary is. I knew generally that the system was in trouble – that at least half of the underwater grassy meadows that used to keep the water clear and clean, provide a home to all sorts of fish and shellfish and form the foundation of a healthy ecosystem – have disappeared in the past two decades. But now that I’ve been out on the bay, hovering at low tide over struggling beds of eelgrass, seeing vast mats of grassy stems ripped from the shallow muddy bottom of the Bay, the graphs and scientific reports about the declining health of the estuary are not just abstract descriptions of some foreign place – they are a diagnosis of a patient I have come to know and care about.

When someone gets sick, the first question tends to be “why,” and like most illnesses, there’s not always a simple answer. We know for sure that one of the causes of the Great Bay – Piscataqua’s ecological decline comes from too much nitrogen flowing into the system from wastewater treatment plants that, for too many years, discharged poorly treated waste into the rivers that feed the estuary. The good news is that communities around the Seacoast are making massive investments to upgrade these plants so that far less nitrogen will be swirling through the system in the years ahead.

But what about other pollutants that run off the land every time it rains? How about the fertilizers that people spread on their lawns and the pesticides that get sprayed around back yards, neighborhood streets, town ball fields, playgrounds and city parks? Since all water flows downhill, don’t they end up in the nearest wetland and stream, and ultimately in our rivers, bay and coast?

This question led me to the most surprising thing of all about my new job – if I’m wondering about something, I can be sure that there’s someone else, not too far away, who’s thought more about it than I have.

In a quiet neighborhood in Dover, I found that person – a young woman who knows a crazy amount about the chemicals that people routinely use to keep lawns green and weed-and-insect free. What she’s learned has turned Diana Carpinone into an unlikely activist, a heavyweight advocate in a welterweight frame. At her small kitchen table she can cite the latest science about the toxicity of chemicals that fill the shelves of most hardware stores and suburban garages, and she’s on a crusade to get her town to stop using them. It’s not just her young son’s health she’s concerned about – she cares about the health of other kids, pets and the estuary itself.

Fortunately, Diana isn’t alone. In mid-September the Portsmouth City Council passed a resolution to eliminate the use of toxic chemicals on city-owned property, and encourage homeowners to follow suit. In passing the resolution, Portsmouth becomes the first municipality in New Hampshire to go “non-toxic.” But how, exactly, do we maintain green lawns, safe streets and a healthy ecosystem?

To answer that question, I found Chip Osborne, a nationally-known expert on natural ways to manage lawns, fields and streets and asked him to share his knowledge. He’ll be joined by John Bochert from Eldredge Lumber in York, a hardware store that has stopped selling toxic lawn care products. Join me for their free presentation at the Portsmouth Public Library on Monday, Oct. 23 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. It’ll be a chance for lots of us to learn how to take care of our land, our health and our estuary – all at the same time.

If I’ve soaked up this much in just one season as Waterkeeper, I can’t wait to see how much more I’ll know after a full circle around the sun.

Melissa Paly is the Great Bay – Piscataqua Waterkeeper.