Volunteering with Save The Bay: A Day in the Life

By Annalisa Carmosino, Save The Bay Volunteer and Intern

When you volunteer with an organization dedicated to preserving something as dynamic as Narragansett Bay, you know every day will be different. Interns and volunteers at Save The Bay work behind the scenes and with the public, contributing to Save The Bay’s educational goals, orchestrating cleanups, and much more.

One of my favorite activities as an intern is assisting at our Exploration Center in Newport. The Exploration Center is home to a variety of creatures native to Narragansett Bay, and a few tropical friends who were misdirected by the Gulf Stream. I have loved learning about the animals in our bay, especially since there are so many I haven’t seen before now. The Exploration Center attracts families, school groups, and anyone walking along the beach who’d like to pet a starfish or see an octopus up close. Teaching our guests about the inhabitants of the bay and watching them interact with those creatures is extremely satisfying. When people have a face (or a fin) in mind, I think it makes them realize how important it is to conserve the Bay.

I’ve also learned that planning a Save The Bay cleanup requires more than gathering a few trash bags. Corporate groups, fraternities, and other organizations reach out to Save The Bay eager to do a group cleanup. Volunteers and interns find an appropriate cleanup site, organize trash removal with the city, and work with the group to figure out the best date for the cleanup. Any and all behind the scenes work is clearly worth it the day of the cleanup. These groups reach out to Save The Bay because they’re excited about our mission and want to help, so we always have enthusiastic volunteers. The beach captain-the volunteer or intern leading the cleanup-is responsible for explaining where and what to clean, and safety precautions. Every cleanup is different, so it’s up to the beach captain to be ready for anything. Volunteers find all kinds of litter on our beaches: clothing, toys, tires, tons of cigarette butts, lots of plastic grocery bags, you name it, we’ve found it.  The volunteers’ energy and the crazy things we find keep things interesting!

Save The Bay also hosts and participates in a variety of events, and throughout my internship, I’ve been assisting our events manager with preparations for Artists for The Bay, Save The Bay’s annual art show and sale in December.  Researching and contacting artists, donors for our raffle, and promoters has been a lot of fun; Rhode Island is a hub of artists and small businesses, so we’ll have plenty of great artwork and prizes. Save The Bay also makes an appearance at events all over the state. Recently we’ve participated in Johnson and Wales University career fair, the Artisan Show at Central Nurseries, and Bowen’s Seafood Festival. Interns and volunteers man the Save The Bay table, providing information about volunteering, upcoming events, and becoming a member. These events are an amazing opportunity to meet people who are unfamiliar with our mission, make connections, and recruit future volunteers or supporters of Save The Bay.

Save The Bay offers so many opportunities to get involved. There’s a role for everyone here. Whether you’re excited to work with the public or prefer to be behind the scenes,  as a volunteer, you’ll help Save The Bay in too many ways to count. To find out more about what you can do for Save the Bay, contact our volunteer manager July Lewis (jlewis@savebay.org) to dive in.

The Battle That Started It All

By Topher Hamblett, Director of Advocacy & Kendra Beaver, Staff Attorney

As Save The Bay approaches our golden anniversary in 2020, we can’t help but celebrate some of the heroes that made us who we are today. One of those heroes is Louise Durfee, the fifth President of Save The Bay. 

Louise has a remarkable record of achievement that has led to dramatic improvements in Narragansett Bay. She has served as director of the R.I. Department of Environmental Management (DEM), Tiverton Town Council president and council member, and chairperson of the Governor’s Sewage Task Force that examined the failure of the Fields Point Wastewater Treatment Plant in the 1970s. She negotiated the creation of the Narragansett Bay Commission and was one of the first female partners of a major law firm in Rhode Island. 

Louise Durfee, fifth president of Save The Bay.

Louise was a Tiverton Town Council member in 1970, when a small but powerful grassroots organization called Save Our Community formed in response to a proposal by Northeast Petroleum to build and operate an oil refinery in Tiverton, on the site of an oil tank farm. That organization became Save The Bay, and she was a key member. Sitting in her home, where the opposition to the refinery first met, Louise shared her reflections on Save The Bay’s first battle, the battle that began it all. 

“I would say that 90-95% of the people in town were in favor of the refinery when it was introduced. The proposers came in and invited the community and all the boards and commissions to free dinner and drinks. People flocked to the Stonebridge Inn. They showed this little video of the the refinery, and how this would lower our taxes. 

“It was here, in this dining room, where only about seven or eight people were saying, ‘What do we do with this?’ We formed a corporation; it was called Save Our Community. We got Jim Edwards, a litigator who threw himself into this, and he did nothing else for three or four months. There were zoning hearings. Jim treated it as a court case. There was no regulatory body in place. No CRMC, no DEM, no Clean Water Act. The social media, the web sites, these did not exist at that time. What we had was newsprint. The coverage by the newspapers was extraordinary.

“Every week, the local paper would have these huge headlines and it would champion the opposers [of the oil refinery]. Gradually, the townspeople began to say, ‘This may not be so good.’ And at the same time, the tank farm at the [proposed refinery] site had spills week after week, and after every single spill we’d call out the press and say, ‘This is what we can expect here!’ 

“We lined the first row of these public hearings with quahoggers, even though Mt. Hope Bay [which abuts northern Tiverton] was closed off to them. It was so amusing. The two lawyers representing Northeast Petroleum would call Jim Edwards and say, ‘Would you mind walking in with us? We’re so fearful of those quahoggers, we think we’re going to get beat up!’ 

“We established an office in the north end of town, with John Scanlon as our executive director. He was there a good part of the day. People came in and out, and there would be gossip and this and that. He was funny, I mean hilarious. He was a great guy. He became a focal point. 

“A guy named John Canulla was going all over the country, looking at refineries, getting reports and feeding them to the press. He was the first president of Save Our Community/Save The Bay.

“When it came to a vote before the Tiverton Town Council, their [Northeast Petroleum] proposal went down 4-3.”

Louise Durfee embodies the spirit of Save The Bay—determined, passionate, persistent, untiring. That was the spirit of the group that founded us back in 1970, and it’s been our spirit for all our 46 years. “It has been an amazing organization. It really has,” Louise said. “The staying power and the role it has taken on....is just extraordinary. It takes a long period of changing culture, and a new generation comes along. Same kind of movement, different technology today, but same work.” 

Louise also reminds us of the urgency of Save The Bay’s mission. “I think the Bay and its resources will always be a challenge. You have stormwater issues. I think we’re just in our infancy on stormwater. I see that as a major issue. It’s complex. We’re literally just beginning to deal with it. Mount Hope Bay, which I look at every day, still needs a tremendous amount of work. I think you’ve been on the right track on all the issues over the years. The education is important. The advocacy is important. There is still a great deal to be done.

“Save The Bay needs to continue its advocacy to make sure DEM and CRMC have the funds to do their jobs. If the regulators themselves are loathe to speak up for greater resources for fear of consequences, Save The Bay and others must carry the load. A weak DEM and CRMC do not serve the public. Enforcement of environmental laws, fairly applied, is a great educator for all of us and ensures that the State’s magnificent resources are preserved for all.”

Thanks to the strong foundation built by Louise and our founders, we look forward to the next 50 years of advocacy for Narragansett Bay. 

Bay-Friendly Living: How much poop is too much in your water?

By Tom Kutcher, Save The Bay Baykeeper

Dogs are really fun and cute and are, indeed, some of our best friends. They have personalities that endear them to us because they exhibit many of the same expressions and postures as humans, including happy, sad, excited and, yes, ashamed.

But frankly, I don’t want to follow along behind any of my best friends and pick up their poop directly after they relieve themselves. I did this with my kids for about four years, collectively, and that was quite enough for my lifetime.

So I understand when dog owners are tempted to just let Rover sneak into the bushes near the sidewalk to discreetly do his No. 2 business without the fanfare and humility of the inside-out shopping bag. But, as the Baykeeper for Save The Bay, I have to tell you that this is not good.

Let’s do the math. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than 462,000 households in Rhode Island. And according to the American Veterinary Medical Association, 29 percent of Rhode Island households are homes to dogs. That means there are at least 134,000 dogs in the state that need to relieve themselves at least once per day.

Just about all land in Rhode Island is in the Narragansett Bay watershed, meaning it drains into rivers, streams, lakes and ponds (including drinking-water reservoirs) and eventually into the bay. Additionally, twice as much land in Massachusetts, with a similar but slightly lower dog ownership rate, also eventually drains into Narragansett Bay. Conservatively, we can estimate that when we add in Massachusetts, twice as many dogs are doing “business” in our watershed — that’s 268,000 pups.

Continuing with the math, let’s use a single dog poop as a starting unit of measure; 268,000 pups times 1 poop per day equals 268,000 poops per day. Now, let’s covert that to volume so we can visualize it. Everyone knows what dog poop looks like, right? For simplicity, let’s say the average poop is about a cup, and there are 16 cups in a gallon. Our conservative estimate of 268,000 cups of poop per day divided by 16 cups per gallon gives us 16,750 gallons of poop per day.

Now visualize a gallon of poop looking about the same size as a gallon of milk, except gross. If you stood those gallons side by side, the gallons of poop “contributed” by our dogs would stretch for more than 1½ miles per day, or 580 miles per year.

Now, none of us would ever consider dumping even a gallon of dog poop into the bay even just once. But if every dog owner in the Narragansett Bay watershed let their dog poop outside without picking it up, we could expect most of those 16,750 gallons of poop to end up in our waterways — the waterways we use for drinking water, swimming, fishing and shellfishing. That’s a lot of poop.

And for a community like Aquidneck Island, where most of the drinking water is gathered directly from watershed surface runoff, it becomes particularly important. In fact, the 24,367 households on Aquidneck Island (according to the 2010 U.S. Census, and that’s not including the summer visitors) translates to about 7,356 dogs on the island pooping about 1 cup per day, for a total of 460 gallons of poop per day being produced on the island.

How much dog poop is acceptable for us to dump into the waters we swim in or drink from? I’m guessing we’d all say “none.” But every time we leave Rover’s No. 2 on the ground when no one is looking, we’re essentially saying that swimming in and drinking contaminated water is OK.

So, just as every individual in Rhode Island collectively contributes to our proud community of Rhode Islanders, our collective conscience in picking up after our pets is what keeps our precious waters clean.

Gail Ginnetty: The Legacy of a Lifetime

Gail Ginnetty’s love of all things water first took root when she learned to sail and began racing during her elementary school days. In high school, she sailed regularly in East Greenwich, and Narragansett became a regular summer beach spot. Now retired from a distinguished career in banking and development, Ginnetty lives in Cranston with a view of the Bay and is on her third sailboat in partnership with other owners. She has plenty of vivid memories—like that time rough weather blew out the spinnaker and her sailboat capsized when she was just 12 or 13, and competing and winning races almost from the beginning—that have fed her love for Rhode Island’s most important natural resource.

“Narragansett Bay has always meant wonderful opportunities to enjoy the water, and every year I create a new wonderful memory,” Ginnetty said. As I matured into adulthood, I developed a growing appreciation for what the Bay means to the state. It truly is part of the body of Rhode Island, and from an economic standpoint, even if you live in Woonsocket with no view of the bay, it’s extremely important to you.”

So, Ginnetty’s first gift to Save The Bay decades ago—in response to a request from someone who knew she cared about the Bay—was sort of “a natural.” In the mid 1980s, she became a sporadic volunteer, and in 1998, began what turned into a 15-year tenure on the board, including eight years as Treasurer. Her knowledge of wealth management and nonprofit endowment planning gave Save The Bay an invaluable leader who would help strengthen the organization fiscally.

Like her involvement with Save The Bay, Ginnetty’s small annual gifts progressed as she got to know the organization better and saw it had all the hallmarks of a good non-profit organization—”well-managed, broad outreach, strong relationships with government, private industry and other non-profits, adaptive strategies, and continuous improvement. Most importantly, I believe in its mission,” she said. In 2004, Ginnetty made what may be her most important contribution to date. She became a founding member of Save The Bay’s Seagrass Society, by notifying Save The Bay of her legacy gift plans.

“My decision to make a legacy gift... is the culmination of all the time, resources and passion I’ve spent here, and I want to think I can continue that investment long after I’m gone.”

The Seagrass Society honors individuals who remember Save The Bay in their estate plan—a legacy gift. Just as seagrass beds are a foundation for a healthy Bay, legacy gifts provide for the longer-term future of the organization and the Bay. They are planned during a donor’s lifetime, and activated upon their passing, allowing donors to fulfill their philanthropic dreams through the legacy they leave behind. More and more people around the world are leaving legacies in increasingly diverse ways—including retirement accounts, life insurance policies, annuities, trusts, personal property or a percentage of one’s estate.

Ginnetty says she’s committed to legacy gifts in particular because they are accessible to everyone. “There is no minimum on a legacy gift. And they give people a chance to think about how they want to be remembered,” she said. “People with limited discretionary income can leave a larger gift in their will than they might be able to give during their life. Annual donors can continue their gift into perpetuity. Donors at any level can take their giving to the next level, whatever that is.”

“I’ve chosen to name Save The Bay a beneficiary of my individual retirement account. I have had the privilege of seeing Save The Bay move from its office in a very small old bank building to this beautiful location and the expansion of education programs that take marine science to schoolchildren all over the state. My decision to make a legacy gift—more than I could give today—is the culmination of all the time, resources and passion I’ve spent here, and I want to think I can continue that investment long after I’m gone,” she said.

An Intern’s First International Coastal Cleanup

By Annalisa Carmosino, Save The Bay Intern

On Saturday, September 19^th, at 8:00 am, Oakland Beach was gray, foggy, and deserted save a few sleepy dog walkers. In less than an hour, volunteers for the International Coastal Cleanup began to arrive: veteran volunteers, students from Bryant University, a group of Girl Scouts. Everyone was eager to get started.

As an events intern at Save The Bay, I helped our Grants and Foundations Manager Stephany Hessler distribute supplies, explain the ICC data sheet, and answer questions about debris found on the beach. By far, the biggest problem we encountered at our site was cigarette butts. One pair of volunteers focused on a small corner of the parking lot and picked up 764 cigarette butts! After working hard on what turned into a sunny day, volunteers made their way to the REI mobile campsite, where they could relax and enjoy lemonade, cornhole and even swing in a hammock.

This was my first cleanup with Save The Bay, and what impressed me the most was the diversity and dedication of our volunteers. It was encouraging to see many families with children; hopefully taking part in a beach cleanup will become a family tradition. I didn’t expect to see many volunteers come to the cleanup by themselves, but quite a few people came alone. The lone wolves, as I called them in my head, showed up to help despite the fact that family or friends couldn’t make it, and without a hint of insecurity. A Save The Bay cleanup is exactly what you’d hope for in a cleanup—a group of everyone and anyone who cares about our coast and wants to contribute the time and effort to clean it.

I love to color code and label anything and everything, so I was super excited about the ICC’s detailed data collection sheets…but a little worried that volunteers might get tired of recording every piece of trash. I was thrilled to be totally wrong. Volunteers valiantly recorded every single cigarette butt. Whenever a team turned in their data sheet, they showed Stephany and me the notes they’d made to keep track of the cigarette butts, or how they had written tally marks for cigarette butts all over the sheet. Their dedication to detail is what makes the ICC possible. Their painstakingly collected data is essential for the Ocean Conservancy to provide an accurate, big-picture representation of the problems facing coastlines around the world.

The total weight of the trash our volunteers removed from Oakland Beach was a little over 800 pounds. For those of you unfamiliar with Oakland Beach-it is not a large area. We also cleaned the parking lot and playground, but the shoreline is only about two miles long. Removing 800+ pounds of trash from such a small and beautiful part of our coast raised conflicting feelings for me and the volunteers: frustration, satisfaction, disbelief and excitement to have taken part in an International Coastal Cleanup. There is still trash on the beach, and people will probably litter tomorrow. But Oakland Beach is 800 pounds of trash cleaner, and that 800 pounds will be part of a larger solution.

King Tides and your Backyard: A Snapshot of our Future

By Rachel Calabro, Community Organizer and Advocate at Save The Bay

As hurricane Joaquin headed away from the East Coast earlier this week, it felt like we dodged a big one. This doesn’t mean, however, that we shouldn’t view this as another wake-up call for what is happening with coastal flooding. The footage coming out of the flood in South Carolina is shocking, but all too real. The potential for our warmer atmosphere to hold water and dump it all at one time is increasing. And, in addition to the growing intensity of rainfall, sea level rise is forcing many coastal residents deal with flooding on a regular basis.

As residents of coastal New England, we need to watch the skies not only for rain clouds, but also for the moon. Why the moon? The full moon brings with it the highest tides of every month. A few times a year (often close to the autumnal equinox), it brings the highest tides of the year, called King Tides.

This is what we experienced last week when everyone was excited about the lunar eclipse. The tides that week were expected to experience a seven-foot difference between the low tide and high tide in Providence. Most full moon tides in Providence average around five feet, and during a half moon, around four feet. The additional two to three feet of water that come during King Tides are just the beginning of the trouble. Add in winds from the south and ample rainfall, and flooding gets worse. Tides last Wednesday registered above eight feet at the top of the Bay.

Save The Bay, along with our partners at the Coastal Resources Management Council and the Coastal Resources Center at URI, is helping to capture photos of these events to share with town and state officials and the public. The photos are available to view at mycoast.org/ri. Volunteers have been out across the state taking photos and using a new smartphone app that is also available to support the mycoast.org webpage.

Car drives through floods along Mathewson Rd. in Barrington.

It doesn’t take much to go from an extremely high tide to water so deep you can’t drive through it. One important thing to remember is that if you are near the coast, this is salt water. Even if it's raining, these are not just puddles, and you can significantly damage your car by driving through it. Don’t let this be you.

Drinking water is on the left side of this dam, while coastal

salt water is on the right.

Roads are not the only infrastructure in danger from high tides. Drinking water reservoirs, waste water treatment plants, pump stations and power lines are all located in coastal areas that will flood in the future. This photo of Nonquit Pond in Tiverton reveals that there are only few years left for this reservoir to retain its current use as a drinking water supply.

National Grid tries to protect is power lines in India Point

Park in Providence.

Snow fencing and hay bales will not stop the inevitable march of the tides.

These photographs are just a vision of the future. Taking the long view is important and planning to accommodate water in whatever way possible will be the best way forward. For now, invest in a moon calendar, and be aware of your surroundings.

Cars are stuck in their driveway at Spadina Avenue

in Warwick. How many days per year will this happen,

and how do we plan for the future?

Currently, this kind of flooding takes place in Rhode Island just a few times a year, but is forecast to become much more common with a continued rise in sea level. This post from the Union of Concerned Scientists points out that by the year 2030, we could be seeing a few dozen days of flooding in locations that only flood occasionally today.

Download a PDF of the full report on coastal flooding here.

If you are interested in helping to record high tide events, the next King Tide will be on October 27th and 28th. Go to mycoast.org or download the app to get started.

Bringing the Outside In

By Jennifer Kelly, Afterschool Program Manager

Jen has been here from the beginning. No, not the beginning of Save The Bay (that was 1970), but the beginning of our five-year partnership with Robertson Elementary School, in which Save The Bay provides marine science education to all K-6 students. The program is called Bay Partners. As the grant from the Defenders of Greenwich Bay nears its end, Jen reflects on the past five years.

At a family night to introduce Save The Bay and our presence in their classrooms, even before our first day of programming, parents were very excited about the new partnership and the experiences their children would enjoy. Then-principal Lynn Dambruch and I explained that Save The Bay’s education team would provide marine science education focused on Narragansett Bay as a local environmental resource. Students would participate in multiple, progressive programs with us that directly connect with K-12 science standards and what they are learning in their science classes. Each grade would receive up to three different classroom programs and one field experience per year. Field experiences might be at our Aquarium or Bay Center, a coastal site or onboard one of our education vessels.

“The vision for this program was to expose students to their local environment through multiple years of programming. Our hope was to give them a more lasting view of the Bay so they would go on to make good decisions and continue protecting it throughout their lives,” said Jack Early, president of Defenders of Greenwich Bay, which provided the five-year grant that has made Bay Partners possible.

Students in many grades have been introduced to live animals—some from our shorelines and others from the depths of the Bay—studying the features that help them survive in Narragansett Bay. Others learned about Bay animals a little differently—through our models, where they explored their external and internal anatomies.

The study of animals has provided an ideal segway into food webs, watersheds, habitats and climate change, since all of these are important to the story of the animals’ survival. And we try to keep it interesting. I felt very proud when Principal Dambruch told me, “Students said that meaningful, hands-on activities made learning about science fun.”

Field experiences have enhanced what the students learned in their classrooms. One student said her favorite was “going on the boat to look for seals—it was a fun adventure.” Third graders became marine scientists, combing the beach and seining the water for artifacts all while discovering it’s sometimes wet and dirty work. “This is so fun! I can change later at school,” one student said after finding herself a bit above her boots in water, and then continued on exploring for shells, crabs, fish and shrimp.

“Our hope was to give them a more lasting view of the Bay so they would go on to make good decisions and continue protecting it throughout their lives.”~ Jack Early, President of Defenders of Greenwich Bay

“The program has given great insight into what’s happening to their local environment. It has changed their lives,” said fifth-grade teacher Leo Gauthier. “Because of what they’re learning in lower grades, they arrive to fifth and sixth grade with a strong knowledge of the Bay and increased science vocabulary. The program has even helped generate better discussions in social studies.”

“Without question, our teachers felt the programs complemented their classroom lessons and aligned with the state’s science standards. On top of that, kids go home and share what they’ve learned about the Bay with their families. The PTO really values and embraces the program,” said Principal Dambruch.

More than 480 students at Robertson Elementary have received classroom programming and field experiences in our Bay Partners program. “It has been an outstanding hands-on experience for them. They are always talking about it. When we are studying current events, they often make connections and bring up examples of what they’ve learned with Save The Bay,” said fifth-grade teacher John Paolino.

One of the most rewarding things for me has been to witness the students’ love and respect for the Bay grow over the years. One student this year told me that he had a very good idea about what a watershed is—and this was two years after he learned about it. He said, “Pollution drains to the Bay. When you first started teaching here, I thought the Bay was not too polluted. Now I think it needs a lot of attention and I will keep helping.”

Every educator hopes to impact the life of a student. These students are Narragansett Bay’s future stewards. It makes me so proud to see how much they have learned and how much it has influenced their lives.

Rhode Island Nature Video Festival Call For Submissions

Save The Bay is proud to share with you the rules and submission regulations to the Rhode Island Nature Video Festival being organized by the Environment Council of Rhode Island. Submission deadline is December 10, 2015. Below are the rules and submission guidelines as submitted to us by NCRI, and any questions should be submitted to environmentcouncil@earthlink.net or 401-621-8048. Good luck! 

Rules for entry are as follows: 

The video must be filmed in Rhode Island by a person or a group of people currently residing in, or going to school, in Rhode Island. The video must be about some sort of nature in Rhode Island. It must be focused on a natural or naturalized set of plants, animals or natural features.  This means no dogs, cats, pet fish, pet birds or farm animals. Turtles, snakes and amphibians should be native species that are free ranging or bound for release like tadpoles in a kiddie pool. No illegally kept or exotics will be included in the festival. Incidental inclusion of domestic animals is okay. For example, you could show the horse you rode on a trail if the video is focused on the trail or other natural feature.  Farms and gardens will be treated the same way, incidental inclusion only, unless you are exploring science. One distinction that we intend to honor is that some videos are just straight from nature. Others can be edited to tell a story and a narrator can be used.       

We encourage videos of various lengths, including short clips and long stories. However, the maximum length is 15 minutes. Any video longer than 45 seconds must include credits and videos with copyright violations shall be rejected. Filmmakers are allowed to submit multiple entries, but quality is prefered over quantity.  

Videos shall be submitted by sending a link to the video to the festival committee email contact.  Sending the link implies that we have permission to use it in the festival. The committee putting on the event shall choose which videos to use in the festival.  We reserve the right to reject any video deemed inappropriate. Some videos may be cut due to time constraints. All submissions must come as a link and accompanied by the Name(s) of those who created the video with: address, phone, email, age category (12 and under, teen, student or adult) and video credits.

Those who submit a video that is included in the program will be entitled to free admission to the festival.

Submission deadline is December 10, 2015 and The Video Festival will be held on February 6, 2016 with tickets going on sale in December. Video submissions and questions should be sent to environmentcouncil@earthlink.net. If you prefer to have your questions answered by phone, you may call the Environment Council office at 401-621-8048.  

The Environment Council of Rhode Island looks forward to your submissions!

Celebrating one year of gas free driving during Drive Electric Week

By Rachel Calabro, Community Organizer and Advocate at Save The Bay

Last summer, I interviewed Save The Bay’s Facilities Manager about his decision to lease a Chevy Volt. The Volt is an electric drive vehicle with a gasoline engine for extended range. The all electric range is about 40 miles, after which a gasoline engine takes over. This is slightly different from a hybrid engine which switches back and forth from gasoline power to electric power during driving. After doing some research of my own, I decided last September to lease an all-electric Nissan Leaf, and go gasoline free. I like the simplicity of having one engine and virtually no maintenance other than tires and brakes.

Driving an all-electric car does take some planning ahead, and is best for city driving. The range varies widely depending on outside temperature and driving conditions. On good days, the range can top 90 miles with moderate driving speeds, but winter weather and use of the heat lowers the range under 80 miles. The car starts to warn you when running with under 20% of the battery remaining, so I generally take 20 miles off my effective range when planning my driving. With a battery instead of a gas tank, I feel like there is a direct feedback and connection to my own energy consumption and driving habits.

Rhode Island Supports Electric Vehicles

In 2013, Rhode Island partnered with National Grid to install 50 public charging stations through the ChargePoint Network. These stations are free to network members for the first four years while owners pay for the electricity. After four years, owners of the stations can decide to keep them free or begin using a fee based system. The stations are distributed throughout the state and are located at the state beaches, malls and restaurants such as Cilantro Grill and Chili’s, and at other locations such as Rhode Island College and Bryant University.

But what About the Electricity?

If you are interested in a direct comparison of energy consumption and costs for an electric car and a gasoline car, here are some of the things I have learned. One gallon of gasoline has the equivalent amount of energy as 34 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity. Our second car, the Honda Fit, gets about 34 miles/gallon or about 1 mile per kWh. My Leaf diagnostics tell me that I average about 4.6 miles per kWh, or the equivalent of about 156 miles per gallon. The 2015 Nissan Leaf advertises an average miles per gallon equivalent of 114 miles, so either I am very efficient or my car is not very accurate.

The 2015 Nissan Leaf battery holds 24 kWh of energy. This means that a full charge at 16 cents per kWh costs about $3.84. I have been using about 200 kWh at home every month, for a cost of about $32. It also means that at an average of 4.6 miles per kWh, I should have a range of 110 miles, which is kind of pushing it. I have heard that the diagnostics are not very accurate, and that is something being worked on. 

To me, all those numbers mean that my electric car is almost five times more efficient than my gasoline car, regardless of the fuel type. Because of regenerative braking technology, the brake pads last up to three years longer. Fewer fluids and oils means less contribution to stormwater pollution. No exhaust means I am not contributing to low level ozone pollution, the major cause of air quality alert days in the heat of the summer. In addition, electric vehicles emit only 19.8% of the total heat emitted by conventional vehicles per mile, reducing the heat island effect in cities.

What About other Sources of Pollution?

Electric vehicles do create more pollution during the manufacturing process, and they do require electricity to be generated somewhere, using some type of energy source. The best scenario would be to plug in to a solar panel array or to purchase green energy through your electric company. Not all parts of the country are set up to distribute electricity from clean sources of fuel. The east and west coasts, however, happen to be areas where the electricity mix is steadily becoming more and more renewable.

According to the Sierra Club, in Massachusetts EVs have about 70% lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional cars. If you are interested in seeing the energy mix going into New England’s electricity generation in real-time, check out this site from ISO New England (our energy grid operator).

The Future of Electric Vehicles

In October 2013, eight states which include Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Washington and California, signed a pledge to get 3.3 million EVs on the road by 2025. I am fairly confident that we will soon reach a tipping point and this goal will be easily surpassed. When the 2018 models start rolling out, we will see range go up over the 200 mile mark and electric cars will be mainstream. Electric options are available from most major car companies already.

The problem with being an early adopter, however, is that depreciation is relatively high, given that the technology is getting so much better with each new car model. This does provide some opportunities, however, if you are looking to get into the electric car game and save a bunch of money. I am very happy with my choice and am looking forward to seeing what happens. I am already fighting for space at the public charging stations that I use, so I know there is a growing crowd out there with me. 

This blog entry was taken from the Watershed Writings blog. To read the all Watershed Writings entries visit the blog. 

Bay-Friendly Living: Litter on land finds its way to bay, ocean

By July Lewis, Volunteer and Intern Manager

Aquidneck Island is home to some of the most beautiful beaches in New England. Large beaches such as Easton’s Beach in Newport draw tourists from around the world, and local gems like Sandy Point Beach in Portsmouth allow families to relax close to home. The island also hosts wildlife sanctuaries such as Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown and prime fishing sites like King Beach in Newport.

There’s a beach for everyone, and the last thing anyone wants to see when they visit their little slice of paradise is trash.

But thousands of pounds of trash wind up on the beaches every year, all from individuals making the seemingly inconsequential choice to drop an item on the ground rather than dispose of it properly. Much of this trash comes from people littering directly on the beach. But what most people don’t know is that it also comes from people littering miles away from shore. How does that happen? Storm drains.

Rain washes litter from the streets into storm drains, which empty into rivers and waterways leading to the ocean. If you’ve ever cleaned out the storm drain in front of your residence, you know how large items like bottles can get caught in the grate. Think of how many smaller items pass through — wrappers, straws, bottle caps and countless cigarette butts. Cigarette filters are not, contrary to popular belief, biodegradable, but made of a type of plastic that falls apart into tiny bits and becomes part of the environment.

All this trash going into the sea not only winds up on our beaches, it often winds up in the stomachs of such animals as sea turtles, birds and whales, which either mistake bits of trash for food or accidentally ingest them while feeding. A whale swallowing a mouthful of krill has no way of spitting out any cigarette butts or bottle caps that come along for the ride. These indigestible items can get lodged in an animal’s digestive tract, filling up their bellies or blocking their systems entirely and leading to death.

Fortunately, Aquidneck Island residents are taking action and standing up for clean beaches.

Students and volunteers are raising awareness of the connection between storm drains and waterways. They glue tags to the curbs above storm drains saying “DON’T DUMP — DRAINS TO BAY” and pass out pamphlets to educate their neighbors.

Shoreline cleanups are another popular way residents are taking action. Save The Bay holds regular cleanups on the island, but we are not alone. Clean Ocean Access has a robust, year-round cleanup program. Naval groups, the Portsmouth Conservation Commission and businesses such as Rhody Surf all hold their own cleanups. Newport’s Clean City Program has a citywide Earth Day cleanup.

Many groups, from schools to Scout troops to neighborhood associations, participate in the annual International Coastal Cleanup each September. During this event, volunteers pick up trash and debris and record it for an annual, global report on marine debris. Last September, on Aquidneck Island alone, 373 volunteers picked up 2,981 pounds of trash from 14 miles of shoreline. The No. 1 item: 5,724 cigarette butts. Other top items were 2,075 bottle caps and 1,840 food wrappers. Less prevalent, but more dangerous, were 319 yards of fishing line, a major entanglement hazard for wildlife. All are the result of careless disrespect for the environment and the community.

The volunteers who came out that day and to cleanups year-round set an example for how we can take care of our beaches. For information on this year’s International Coastal Cleanup, on Sept. 19, visit www.savebay.org/icc.

Perhaps the most important way we each can make a difference in reducing beach pollution on Aquidneck Island is to simply let other people know that it’s not OK to litter. People care what their friends and family think of them, so you can gently let people know there are alternatives.

If you see friends littering, say something — even if it’s “just” a cigarette butt. Set an example by taking a trash bag with you to the beach and leaving it just a little cleaner than you found it. Remind friends that if they use storm drains as a trash can, they turn the bay into a trash can. Join a cleanup and invite your friends to participate — it’s amazing how enthusiastic people get about clean beaches once they have a chance to make a difference.

To find a beach cleanup near you, visit www.savebay.org/volunteer or www.clean oceanaccess.org.

July Lewis is the volunteer and internship manager at Save The Bay, a nonprofit environmental organization that is providing a series of occasional columns for The Daily News about stormwater issues on Aquidneck Island.