Cracking down on nutrient pollution: CLF fights to bring New England's coastal waters back to life.

• Author: Kilian, Chris
• Position: Cover story

Toxic algae. Shorelines strewn with rotting fish. These aren't the images that come to mind when most people think of Cape Cod--but they're snapshots of what the Cape is quickly becoming, as years of unmitigated water pollution take their toll on the area's legendary waterways.

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Cape Cod's waters contain excessive levels of nitrogen, a problem known as nutrient pollution. Resulting from untreated wastewater that flows into nearby waterways, the excess nitrogen causes toxic algae blooms to grow, eelgrass beds to degenerate, and macro algae to increase, threatening plants and marine life and leading to "fish kills," the periodic loss of fish and other species. Eventually, those areas become "dead zones"--uninhabitable by any life at all.

Nutrient pollution runs rampant in waterways throughout New England and the nation. The EPA has been slow to address the issue or establish strict enough pollution control requirements to maintain the water quality standards dictated by the federal Clean Water Act. Without sufficient enforcement of these laws, polluters won't grasp the urgency of the problem or be compelled to fix it.

On Cape Cod, officials have known about the pollution problem for over 30 years. The pollution is caused by septic systems that don't remove enough nitrogen from wastewater before discharging it back into the Cape's waterways. In 1978, officials developed a wastewater management plan to mitigate nitrogen pollution, which has not been updated since.

CLF got involved in spring 2009. After a year and a half of community meetings and discussions, CLF had raised awareness of the issue among local officials and town residents, but the cleanup wasn't any farther along.

Last month, CLF took legal action to pressure the EPA to step up and hold towns accountable for reducing pollution to meet water quality standards dictated by the Clean Water Act. CLF also pushed the EPA to adequately permit and regulate the discharge of human wastewater from septic systems, which have been ignored by the EPA in violation of the Clean Water Act.

SETTING A PRECEDENT

Across the state, CLF advocates are tackling nitrogen pollution in another major waterway. The Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District, which originates near Worcester, MA, is the largest point source into Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. The Upper Blackstone's nitrogen-Laden discharge flows into the bay, contributing to a vast dead zone that forms every...