ECOLOGY OF BUZZARDS BAY: An Estuarine Profile 1 27 



been developed (Buzzards Bay Project 1 990); this 

 translates into a potential doubling of nutrients to 

 the bay at maximum development. Because vari- 

 ous embayments are showing the signs of incipient 

 cultural eutrophication. the nearshore areas will suffer 

 significant habitat degradation without some form 

 of nitrogen management. Several mechanisms of 

 nutrient management can be enacted with the aim 

 of allowing watershed development to continue but 

 in a fashion that mitigates potential damage to the 

 estuarine system. The goals of managers, environ- 

 mentalists, fishermen, and local citizens converge in 

 that degradation of the embayments does not just 

 affect ideological conservationism. Degradation also 

 directly impacts jobs related to fisheries within the 

 bay and on offshore species that rely on the bay 

 and its marshes for portions of their life cycles, and 

 the property values (e.g., capital investments) of all 

 of the private citizens within the watershed. There- 

 fore, it is in the personal and financial interest of the 

 general population to support environmental man- 

 agement programs that protect resources or 

 remediate degraded areas of the Buzzards Bay sys- 

 tem. The increasing awareness of the need for re- 

 source management, particularly watershed nitro- 

 gen management, is being demonstrated by town 

 governments, the growth of citizens' groups aimed 

 at distributing information, and the active participa- 

 tion of individual citizen-based monitoring programs 

 on a bay-wide scale (through the Buzzards Bay 

 Project) and by individual towns (e.g.. Falmouth). 

 Through individual efforts and as part of larger 

 cooperative efforts of the Buzzards Bay Project and 

 the Coalition for Buzzards Bay, towns within the 

 Buzzards Bay watershed are now working toward 

 more effective management strategies to minimize 

 additional nitrogen inputs into the waters of the bay. 

 Through these efforts, local by-laws and regional 

 management plans for the bay that take into ac- 

 count the variety of land uses (Table 7. 1 ), economic 

 structure, and specific limitations (for instance, ad- 

 ministrative or financial) of these different commu- 

 nities are being developed. An example of this is 

 the cooperation between three towns. Bourne, 

 Wareham, and Plymouth, to address the increasing 



eutrophication in Buttermilk Bay. Working with town 

 officials, local and regional planners in the towns 

 have adopted local zoning overlay districts, which 

 rezone areas within the subwutershed in an attempt 

 to minimize new sources of nitrogen to Buttermilk 

 Bay. 



With the goal of assessing water quality condi- 

 tions baywide, the Buzzards Bay Project and the 

 Coalition for Buzzards Bay, in cooperation with the 

 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, initiated a 

 citizen-based water quality monitoring program in 

 1 992 aimed primarily toward monitoring nitrogen 

 and oxygen conditions in the numerous nitrogen- 

 sensitive coves and embayments around the bay. 

 Not only does this project provide important infor- 

 mation for the long-term assessment of coastal wa- 

 ter quality in Buzzards Bay. but it also stimulates 

 interest and education of the local citizens in pro- 

 tecting the environmental health of their nearshore 

 coastal waters. 



Technological advances may also increase the 

 carrying capacity of the watershed. New systems 

 are becoming available that remove nitrogen and 

 phosphorus from wastewater. These systems can 

 be added predischarge from outfalls or can be used 

 on a small scale in the more sensitive areas of spe- 

 cific subwatersheds. Investigation is also continuing 

 into the design of septic systems that are cost- 

 effective and can remove nitrogen by stimulating mi- 

 crobial denitrification before discharge of the efflu- 

 ent to groundwater. However, one of the essential 

 requirements to proper management is the deter- 

 mination of the assimilative capacity of individual 

 embayments. While it may seem costly, this ap- 

 proach actually represents a fraction of the expen- 

 diture required in the prevention or remediation of 

 nutrient loading. Given the expense of wastewater 

 treatment systems it is inefficient to improve treat- 

 ment over present systems in all areas within the 

 bay system. The proper method is to determine the 

 allowable nitrogen input and the locations where 

 post-discharge magnification of the input is greatest 

 and focus the efforts there. For instance, given the 

 heavy metal, PCB, oil, and other inputs to New 

 Bedford Outer Harbor and the relatively limited area 



