For the last few years, we have been politely asking everyone in charge at the Town of Barnstable to allow homeowners in areas the sewer won't reach for a decade or more to install, at our own cost, an I/A septic system to speed up the attack on nutrient pollution. And with each phone call, …
Continue reading Mashpee Proposes What Barnstable Won’t Even Consider
Happy new year everyone! Here's hoping 2022 is a milestone year for improving the quality of Shoestring Bay and all nitrogen-polluted waterways on the Cape. We've been pretty tough on the Town of Barnstable as we work to raise awareness of the dangers facing Shoestring Bay and other affected bodies of water. But we've come …
Amid the drumbeat of bad news about the declining water quality within Shoestring Bay and other Cape Cod waterways, we’ve got some good news to report. The Cape’s Massachusetts Alternative Septic System Test Center (MASSTC) announced that we’ve moved one step closer to having a superior nitrogen sensor to measure the compliance of I/A septic …
Continue reading Inching Closer to a Better I/A Measurement Tool
As we reported on July 28, 2021, Prof. Brian Howes opened his annual report presentation to the town of Mashpee on the state of our waterways with these ominous words: "For the first time in 20 years I have nothing good to say." Well, I'm pleased to report that, after hearing Town Manager Mark Ells' …
Continue reading Some Hopeful News from Town Council Workshop on Shoestring Bay’s Future
On July 1, the Town Council approved the $10,000 sewer assessment fee for each residential property slated for sewering. If you're able to tune in to tonight's Town Council Meeting on local Channel 18/YouTube, you'll hear Town Manager Mark Ells and the Council debate how to use general funds when existing revenue sources fall short …
Continue reading Tonight: Town Council Workshop on Sewer Funding
We're still digesting the data and observations from Prof. Brian Howes' distressing report to the Town of Mashpee Board of Selectmen on the steadily declining water quality of our bays due to nitrogen pollution. Howes is Chancellor Professor at the School for Marine Science + Technology at UMass. Dartmouth and has been tracking the decline …
Continue reading A Few Take Aways from Doomsday Report on Our Bays
In March 2021, the Town of Barnstable unveiled its preliminary cost model for paying for the $1.4 billion multi-decade project of sewering of the town. Half of the cost would be come from existing funds. The rest would fall on property owners, to the tune of a $17,000/property assessment, paid out over 30 years. An …
For more than 20 years, the towns of Barnstable and Mashpee have known that Shoestring Bay was being slowly destroyed by excess nitrogen from septic systems leaching into the groundwater. They've known that Title 5-approved septic systems were never designed to remove nitrogen from wastewater. And they've known that the installation of Title 5 septic …
Continue reading Shoestring Bay Can’t Wait Another 20 Years: Approve I/A Systems Now
Title 5 is a Massachusetts regulation that requires the proper siting, construction, and maintenance of septic and other on-site wastewater disposal systems. When it was enacted in 1995 Title 5 was hailed as a model of environmental stewardship, designed to protect the Commonwealth’s waterways and communities from contamination. Conventional Septic System Design Fast-forward to 2021 …
The town of Barnstable estimates it will cost $1.4billion to undo the decades of neglect of our polluted, dying waterways. That could cost a property owner $17k over 30 years for sewering costs and other remediation technologies. Yup, that's a lot of money. But the cost of doing nothing is even scarier. The decrease in …
Continue reading You Think Fixing our Waterways is Expensive?
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