Cape Cod begins planning to control nitrogen pollution: CLF lawsuits spur state action on water quality.

• Position: PROGRESS REPORT

THE PROBLEM

Nitrogen pollution is a current problem and growing threat for the fragile bays and estuaries that support Cape Cod's economy. On the Cape, water from septic and stormwater control systems and wastewater treatment plants flows quickly through coarse sandy soils, bringing tons of excess nitrogen into streams and open waters. This nitrogen acts like a fertilizer, causing massive algae blooms that threaten animal and plant species and can make the Cape's bays unsafe for swimming, boating and shellfish consumption.

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CLF IN ACTION

In 2010 and 2011, Conservation Law Foundation and Buzzards Bay Coalition filed two Clean Water Act lawsuits in U.S. federal court. The lawsuits sought to hold the Environmental Protection Agency accountable for failing to take actions to reduce nitrogen pollution into 68 waterways on Cape Cod. Christopher Kilian, Vice President and Director of CLF's Clean Water and Healthy Forests Program, said that nitrogen pollution is driving the Cape to the brink of ecological disaster. The lawsuits, he said, were intended to spur EPA to implement its obligations to review, update and enforce a working and time-bound plan to stop the flow of nitrogen-laden wastewater and stormwater into the Cape's bays.

PROGRESS

Prodded by the CLF lawsuits, the Massachusetts Water Pollution Abatement Fund provided $3 million to the Cape Cod Commission to complete a regional wastewater treatment plan. The commission set what Caitlin Peale, a CLF attorney, called an "ambitious timetable" for drafting a plan by May 2014 and has 37 public meetings set for this summer into the late fall. The last regional water plan--called a Section 208 plan--was completed in 1978 and has not been updated since.

CLF experts are hopeful that a regional legal framework that includes planning, infrastructure development and vigorous pollution controls will be established on the...