1. Full Penobscot Bay No-Discharge Area Necessary
2. Maine BEP policy needs to be reviewed by OPEGA, reformed
3. National Estuary Program Take 2.1
4. Penobscot Bay-wide heavy metals annual testing, using LPA site products as samples
5. Pierce the Sears island causeway to revive Stockton Harbor and Searsport Harbor circulation
6. Touch the Bay A touch screen/clickable Penobscot Bay
7. Develop working relationship with USCG's Belfast Marine Safety Detachment.
8. Backgrounder: Midcoastal Maine National Marine Sanctuary proposal.
9. Conserving Inshore Juvenile Cod Habitat via HAPCs
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1. FULL BAY NO DISCHARGE AREA NEEDED
West Penobscot Bay No Discharge Area must expand to a full Penobscot Bay No Discharge Area. Else marina sprawl will turn whole bay into Class SC waters (lowest)
NDA FACT SHEET https://www.maine.gov/dep/water/wd/vessel/nda/ndafactsheet.pdf
Maine point of contact
Pam Parker
Boat Pumpout Grant, Vessel Discharge & Water Enforcement Manager
Maine DEP 17 SHS, Augusta, ME 04333-0017
tel: 207-485-3038 Fax 207-287-3435
Pamela.d.parker@maine.gov
(She has been running Maine's pumpout program for decades & would eagerly support a Penobscot Baywide NDA if you can provide a thumbs up from the Governor Mills - Let Pam do that - and the on-the-bay vessel count data required
I interviewed her in 2003 on WRFR. (Tech has improved but process hasn't really changed in 20 years) https://penbay.org/baywide/nda/ndz_pam_parker_june12_2003_13min30sec.mp3
No Discharge Areas NDAs are enforceable boundaries that MDEP sets with agreement by EPA. Within them sewage (blackwater) is barred from discharge. Greywater from showers, laundry and sinks is allowed unless it is combined with blackwater. All of Casco Bay is an NDA In Penobsot Bay the NDA covers the waters of Rockland, Rockport and Camden
Ms Parker knows it all and is always glad to talk by phone, email and in person about expanding Penobscot Bay's NDA.
https://www.maine.gov/dep/water/wd/vessel/nda/index.html
How does the State designate an area as an NDA? In order to designate an area as an NDA, the State must apply to the United State Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) for authority under section section 312(f)(3) of the Clean Water Act.
The process is as follows:
• The State, with or without input from interested parties, identifies a waterbody(ies) that need additional protection from pollution.
• The State investigates whether the waterbody needs additional protection by evaluating current water quality, other sources of pollution, the natural resources potentially impacted and the number of boats using the waterbody.
• The State identifies the size and types of vessels in the waterbody, and identifies all sewage pumpout locations.
• The State prepares an application to the USEPA for the authority to designate the waterbody an NDA.
• USEPA reviews the application and if it finds that the pumpout stations are adequate issues a Notice of Determination in the Federal Register.
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Maine BEP needs to be reviewed by OPEGA, reformed
BOARD OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION NEEDS OPEGA REVIEW, REFORMS (Office of Program Evaluation and General Accounting)
Reason: Well documented evidence indicates that BEP is failing to follow the laws and rules it is required to follow. As a result the Environment is not getting the “Protection” it is entitled to by law. This is detailed especially clearly in Nordic litigation and in administrative appeals to the BEP re Nordic, Marina Sprawl, private pier expansion.
Compare BEP decision-making of the present with the BEP's early decisions since its 1972 appearance as replacement of its predecessor Environment Improvement Commission, itselt
OPEGA home page https://legislature.maine.gov/opega/
HOW to request an OPEGA review https://legislature.maine.gov/opega/request-for-a-review/9157
Past OPEGA reports https://legislature.maine.gov/opega/opega-reports/9149
Why OPEGA Review? Structural flaws revealed in recent major BEP's decisions need examination and correction as needed
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RE-NOMINATE BAY TO NATIONAL ESTUARY PROGRAM. https://penbay.org/bmnep/penobscot_bay_nep_nomination_1995.pdf * EPA's NEP info
The 1995 document is a sort of baseline info of the bay “then” and a view of our time as the future. Many predictions of this document have come to pass.
In 2019 I tried to resurrect the bay's NEP nomination in a state legislative resolve LD 1336. Full wording below link and my preface. Being an EPA program and their having added additional estuaries added to their program following the first group, re-submitting is a no-brainer. * Here is Ld 1336 a 1 page legislative resolve submitted in 2019 directing the Governor to renominate Penobscot Bay for the National Estuary Program .
AT ISSUE Some had said that the US EPA program doesn't take any new candidates. But first: Penobscot Bay is not a "new" candidate. There just wasn't the money at the time for every candidate. Second, Penobscot Bay, more than ever, fits the profile of an estuary in need of the resources of an National Estuary Program designation. Third, even IF the NEP has become a cozy EPA backwater with no new guests to the NEP table desired, why, politics is the art of the possible and impossible and I can't see EPA smacking down our governor, nor dismissing our congressional delegation when they see the value and public support for the Pen Bay NEP once it get under consideration again.
That was the plan. But the 2019 legisllator withdrew the bill under uninformed political pressure.
That does not mean we oughtn't try again.
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BAYWIDE TOXICS SNAPSHOT USING BAY LPA SITES AS SOURCES
A DOUBLE ISSUE. Maine's Limited Purpose Aquaculture 'Licenses' are spreading rapidly into inshore ay waters adjacent to land and sediment sites with documented waste concerns. This presents an opportunity to collect toxic bioaccumulation data of a portable kind of aquaculture (licensees) that can easily move from problem locations. Left image show LPA licensed sites as of October 2023. Right=outfalls( blue/white & red/white, wastewater plants, orange & black) landfills & other remediation sites (color circles w/centerdots.
(Not shown: oil and gas spills, as they would cover the map. Also not shown: standard aquaculture leases)
AT ISSUE DMR does not require toxics testing of the animals and algae typically grown in LPA cages or trays: oysters, mussels, nori, sugar kelp, other algae. Yet they are well known, well understood heavy metals bioaccumulators. DMR's biosecurity is focused on biological threats - bacterial and viral- and does it well. Chemical threats? Not so much.
Yet as the attached pair of images show, Penobscot Bay has well documented pollution hotspots associated with the mid19th to late 20th century era. Industry grew here, supplied by first sail, then steam then petroleum power . Departing companies left their industrial wastes behind, Demolished old factories were dumped into spent quarries or directly onto the shore to enlarge upland rea;l estate. covered with fill dirt. and and abandoned Remediation may have been state of the art at the time, (1940s-1980s) but time is one thing the remediation has not withstood.
PROPOSAL As DMR is being timid about metals testing, your BayCare project would purchase samples directly from each of the LPA aquaculture operations in the bay - they sell from home - and test them for the 4 heavy metals of Penobscot Bay waters concern: methylmercury, cadmium, lead & arsenic. Funding may be available for PFAS testing too though at present the state is still sorting out testing regimes for that set of chemicals
RESULTS. A scientifically credible snapshot of the heavy metals loading of the seaweed and shellfish species being raised and sold in Penobscot Bay - location by location. This allows hotspots to be detected and LPAs to be diverted from such locations. .
Suggestion: Contract with Maine Environmental Laboratory for bay wide* coordinated contaminants testing of sediments and aquacultured biota. MEL is among the certified testing labs of Main. Employee owned . I've used them a number of times, mostly to follow up on earlier waste spill reports from several chronic leaker locations from earlier decades GAC Chemical and the former papermill turned landbased aquaculture applicant. Here are two I will get into why doing it baywide is important
Here are two MEL reports I commissioned
A 2016 MEL report on GAC chemical waste sites
A 2019 MEL report on mercury in Bucksport sediment immediately below proposed Whole Oceans site
* Note: "Bay-wide" means at least one set of sediment and/or biota tests in waters/intertidal of every bay town)
PIERCE THE SEARS ISLAND CAUSEWAY TO RESTORE STOCKTON HARBOR
Everyone knows the causeway is a bad idea. It collapsed Stockton Harbor clamfisheries. It was done illegally based on fraudulent statements. This according to 1985 Sierra Club v. Secretary of Transportation. 779 F.2d 776 (1st Cir:
"The arbitrary and capricious action of the Coast Guard in allowing Maine DOT to submit an application for a causeway as if it were an application for a bridge and approving such application by itself treating the structure as a bridge is sufficient to justify the revocation of the permit."
So why not petition the court once more to revisit the issue, now that the state has shown it will do nothing.
Expand from this simplistic version to include the latest eco-issues of each town and a link where foks can sendinfo to be added (subject to editorial review for taste and legality )
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WORK WITH USCG MARINE SAFETY DETACHMENT, BELFAST . They are the only MSD in Maine, They are
required to be notified at once of all spills and leaks that reach
Maine intertidal and subtidal waters.
INCIDENT
IN 1998. It was the
USCG's MSD Belfast investigator who examined a spill threat at the
GAC Chemical site at our request in 1998. This was followed by an
immediate pump
out of one of GAC's “stormwater” catch basins - this one only
ten feet above high tide. that was more than half filled with tons
of semi-congealed waste oil. That had been dumped into the
stormwater drains for many years from one or more of their of their
now vanished facilities, and made its way to the shoreline catch
basin whose wooden front was bulging outward Video
recordings 1998 (digitized) available.
MIDCOASTAL MAINE NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY. by Jerry A. Topinka, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences West Boothbay Harbor, Maine. PART 1 PART 2
The proposal was withdrawn under intense pressure of fishermen - despite assurances that US marine sanctuaries, by law, CANNOT regulate fisheries
* CONSERVING INSHORE JUVENILE COD HABITAT
Step 1 Underwater videography at the bay's mainland and island coasts, to the 30 foot depth contour.
In 2018, NOAA published a Federal Register notice declaring New England coastal waters from the high tide line to the 20 meter depth contour to be Habitat Areas of Particular Concern for Inshore Juvenile Atlantic Cod provided it has gravel, rockweed,eelgrass cobble or ledge or other 3d habitat juvenile cod and their prey can hide within . They are safer there from predators than anywhere else at their small size. Agencies are required to discern the quality of this HAPC area when making decisions about habitat degrading activities.
For example the broad intertidal areas on either side of the abandoned stone pier on Sears island from Gov King's failed effort. are HAPC but the windport map to date calls for most of them to be filled over
Here is underwater video of Rockport Harbor high quailty HAPC
