Remembering Not to Forget

WATERSHED WRITINGS

Rachel Calabro
Community Organizer

How did we lose sight of the riches our streams and rivers once provided?  Accounts from early European settlers tell of unimaginable numbers of fish filling the rivers during spring spawning runs. There were so many fish that thousands could be caught in a day, and hundreds were placed in fields as fertilizer. Eels were in such large abundance that they were used for everything from horsewhips to hair oil. It’s been estimated that eels once made up one-fourth of all fish biomass in rivers on the Atlantic coast.

In his book, RunningSilver, John Waldman talks of the shifting baselines syndrome where we begin a pattern of forgetting that over the generations shifts our understanding of the true nature of these systems. You can say the same about global warming. As each generation becomes more and more used to a world without snow, we will forget that outdoor ice skating was once commonplace in Rhode Island and will believe that ice on Narragansett Bay is an“extraordinary” occurrence.

In the beginning, fish runs were preserved with bypass channels as mills were built, and farmers would come and take dams down by force if necessary. A 1735 Massachusetts law did not allow dams on rivers that would serve as a barrier to fish. This law was generally ignored and as rivers were taken over by human machinery, many mill owners just waited until the fish runs became smaller and smaller to the point where people forgot. They then claimed that fish had never run in the river, and it made no economic sense to restore them. A 1920 state inventory of river herring found that the Mill River in Taunton was so badly polluted by manufacturing waste that restoration of the fishery would be “impossible”.

We began to forget, but the fish did not. The fish persisted and even in the beginning of this century runs of river herring on the Taunton River remained above two million fish. Today, we have removed some obstacles and have restored water quality to a degree, but the fish are not returning. We all speculate on the reasons, and they are many.

Slowly, our public resources were taken over by private interests and now restoration must be done with public money. Many private dam owners are willing to take down their unwanted dams, but not without the help of federal and state agencies who pay most if not all of the cost. Because fish passage restoration is a goal of the government, we are willing to see this happen. State agencies have the duty to protect the public, so they inspect private dams, rather than require owners to do it themselves. How did we get here, and why do we allow these attitudes to persist? It certainly is the tragedy of the commons, but we should not leave it at that. We should reevaluate what a shared resource means for all people and all species, and not forget what we once had, even if we can’t go back in time.

- Rachel

A Win For The Bay in Warwick

VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

It is not often that we can cheer a major win for the Bay.  Today is one of those days. 

Jonathan Stone
Executive Director

The Warwick City Council voted 6-2 last night – in the second of two required votes - to authorize the City to borrow $56 million to extend sewer lines, upgrade the de-nitrification capacity of the Warwick wastewater treatment plant, and construct a protective berm around the plant to secure it against the flood-prone Pawtuxet River.  Yesterday morning the Providence Journal published an op-ed we submitted laying out the case for this investment, and for the critical importance of additional state investments in wastewater treatment and stormwater infrastructure.

Read Jonathan Stone's Op-ed in the Providence Journal

The seeds of this major victory were sewn in 2006, when Save The Bay succeeded in securing the passage of a statewide law requiring property owners with cesspools, which have been outlawed since the 1960s, and living  within 200 feet of the Bay to tie into sewer mains or replace them with advanced on-site septic systems by the end of 2012 (subsequently delayed by the Legislature to 2014).  

Negative publicity related to repeated and persistent beach closures, and the statewide cesspool phase-out law forced the City to confront this challenge at long last this summer.  The City Council, Mayor Scott Avedisian’s administration, and the Warwick Sewer Authority all deserve praise for pushing ahead with a funding solution for a serious pollution problem decades in the making.  While much work remains to be done to complete the necessary improvements, this City Council vote ensures the financial resources to move forward.

This success story, like so many of the water quality issues we confront today, highlights the extraordinary complexity of protecting the Bay, as well as the fish, shellfish, birds and marine mammals who call it home.  As the environmental challenges have shifted over time, Save The Bay has had to adapt its approach.  By focusing on the key barriers and constraints communities face, we’ve been able to identify (and promote) workable solutions.

None of this would be possible without the enthusiastic support, active engagement, and philanthropic generosity of our members, our donors, and our Board.  Thank you for being partners in this success.  Today is one of those days we can celebrate.  Tomorrow is a new day, and there is much to be done.

- Jonathan

Environmental regulations are not burdensome

BAYKEEPER REPORT

Tom Kutcher
Narragansett Baykeeper
@NarraBaykeeper

Our Rhode Island economy has been in a slump and we're all looking for the cause. I have my own theories, but I won't get us all riled up with those here. Instead, I want to focus on one flawed theory I've heard that pins blame on our State environmental regulations. The theory holds that environmental regulations put undue stress on small businesses. I have even heard some public servants say that environmental regulations drive small businesses out of state! Luckily, in a well-conceived and well-written report by our Office of Management and Budget / Office of Regulatory Reform entitled Findings of a 2013 Small Business Survey, the truth has been exposed: Small business owners DO NOT perceive environmental regulations as burdensome. 

The report detailed the results of a survey in which 709 small business leaders were asked to rank the importance of a list of “challenges” facing their businesses. The list included health insurance costs, federal regulations, state regulations, and other potential expenses or impediments. State regulations were identified second to health insurance costs, and respondents were asked to identify the regulations that were most burdensome. The report listed all State regulations that were identified by more than one respondent, and not a single environmental regulation was among them. 

This was surprising even to me, so I dug deeper. I suspected that perhaps the representation of businesses in the sample was skewed away from businesses most directly affected by environmental regulations, but this was not the case. In fact, the participants from the construction (125), manufacturing (113), and direct resource use/extraction (33) sectors were strongly represented in relation to the average (median) of 22 participants per sector. 

I commend the Office of Regulatory Reform for setting the record straight on this. We rely on our environmental regulations to protect our natural resources, our health, our property values, and our quality of life; and our small businesses get it. Let’s not let unsubstantiated theories threaten those benefits.

- Tom