From the Falmouth Enterprise · November 2, 2017 · By Brittany Feldott
On November 2, 2017, Falmouth's wastewater superintendent, Amy Lowell, told the town's Water Quality Management Committee that West Falmouth Harbor has not yet improved, but that monitoring wells show the nitrogen plume from the old treatment plant is on its way out. The plant on Blacksmith Shop Road opened in 1986 and sent nitrogen into groundwater that flows to the harbor. The plume reached the inner harbor by 1994 and eventually wiped out eelgrass beds there. A $15 million upgrade finished in 2005 cut the plant's nitrogen output sharply. A sentinel (long-term) monitoring station in the inner harbor, run by UMass Dartmouth's School for Marine Science & Technology, showed no improvement as of summer 2017. Wells nearer the plant tell a better story. The well about 200 feet down the groundwater path has stayed under the state's 3 milligrams per liter nitrate limit since 2010. The well about 1,700 feet down has stayed under it since September 2015 and read below 1 in 2017. The farthest well, about 3,700 feet down, still read 4 to 6 since 2011. Lowell called it "good progress" but not yet recovery.
This story is about West Falmouth Harbor, a different watershed from Waquoit Bay. It is included as a local example of how slowly groundwater nitrogen can clear. Lowell said the original forecast of seven to 10 years assumed groundwater moves 1.5 to 2 feet a day, and that figure did not fit West Falmouth's sediments or allow for the spreading and mixing of the plume. The article is from 2017. The lesson for Waquoit Bay is that a cleanup, whether a sewer, a treatment upgrade or a septic fix, can take many years to show up in the water, so patience and long-term monitoring both matter.
This is CPWB’s summary of a news article. The full article and its photos are published by the Falmouth Enterprise.
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