THE BUZZARDS BAY PROJECT 



US Environmental Protection Agency Massachusetts Executive Office of 

 WQP-2100 Environmental Affairs 



John F Kennedy Federal Building 100 Cambridge Street 



Boston. MA 02203 Boston, MA 02202 



FOREWORD 



In 1984, Buzzards Bay was one of four estuaries in the country 

 chosen to be part of the National Estuary Program. The Buzzards 

 Bay Project was initiated in 1985 to protect water quality and 

 the health of living resources in the bay by identifying resource 

 management problems, investigating the causes of these problems, 

 and recommending actions that will protect valuable resources 

 from further environmental degradation. This multi-year project, 

 jointly managed by United States Environmental Protection Agency 

 and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, 

 utilizes the efforts of local, state, and federal agencies, the 

 academic community and local interest groups in developing a 

 Master Plan that will ensure an acceptable and sustainable level 

 of environmental quality for Buzzards Bay. 



The Buzzards Bay Project is focusing on three priority problems: 

 closure of shellfish beds, contamination of fish and shellfish by 

 toxic metals and organic compounds, and high nutrient input and 

 the potential pollutant effects. By early 1990, the Buzzards Bay 

 Project will develop a Comprehensive Conservation and Management 

 Plan to address the Project's overall objectives: to develop 

 recommendations for regional water quality management that are 

 based on sound information, to define the regulatory and 

 management structure necessary to implement the recommendations, 

 and to educate and involve the public in formulating and 

 implementing these recommendations. 



The Buzzards Bay Project has funded a variety of tasks that are 

 intended to improve our understanding of the input, fate and 

 effects of contaminants in coastal waters. The Project will 

 identify and evaluate historic information as well as generate 

 new data to fill information gaps. The results of these Project 

 tasks are published in this Technical Series on Buzzards Bay. 



