The York Rivers Association

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Watershed Grant
April 10, 2002, York Independent
By Virginia L. Woodwell

When water sheets off the big slate roof of the new public library, where does it go? And what oil and grease and other polluting particulates does it pick up along the way -- and with what consequences?

The same questions might be asked about water passing over the roofs and roads and parking lots of the scores of new developments in town, from Shop 'n Save's and York Hospital's to those of the town's smallest new homes, and it is the answers to these questions and many more that researchers are seeking as they begin, this month, a major new study to preserve and protect the York River watershed.

Funded by a $42,694 federal grant issued in support of the federal Clean Water Act -- money dispersed through the State of Maine's Department of Environmental Protection, to be matched by another $28,543 kicked in, in volunteer effort and in-kind services, by a variety of other local participants -- the project is being officially sponsored by the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve (WNERR), but it could also be said to be the latest -- and most conspicuously successful and far-reaching -- fruit of the York Rivers Association.

That loose coalition of citizens founded by York resident Caroline Donnelly in the early 1990s has functioned for some eight years now to draw together a wide variety of diverse interests in common focus on the health and well-being of the York River. Last year that effort linked representatives of the WNERR with representatives of the Town of York's Planning Board and Conservation Commission to draft this successful grant application.

Now the yoking of interests continues: Michele Dionne, WNERR Research Director is serving as the project's coordinator; Vallana Pratt-Decker, a licensed code enforcement officer who worked last year for the Town of York, is the project's manager; other organizations and/or stakeholders involved include the Southern Maine Regional Planning Commission, the York Planning Department, the York Conservation Commission, the York Water District, the York Land Trust, the Great Works Land Trust, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Americorps volunteers, and the York County Natural Resource Conservation Service Office.

Additionally, because portions of the watershed fall outside York ("Watershed thinking knows no political boundaries," says Pratt-Decker, and the grant describes this watershed as stretching 8.5 miles inland from the coast and draining an area of 32.2 square miles), individuals and agencies from the towns of Kittery, Eliot and South Berwick will also be involved.

Called the "York River Watershed Survey and Management Plan," the project envisions taking 18 months (until August, 2003) to inventory the watershed for data about land use and its relationship to non point source pollution (pollution that comes from several diffuse and not readily identifiable sources), to conduct a field survey to verify non point sources of pollution, and to create a comprehensive plan, after convening a committee of interested stakeholders, for the management of the watershed, that recommends corrective local action, both in the field and via ordinances.

As voiced in the plan itself, those goals include making the management plan "community-based," and "convey[ing] the elements of the plan to critical audiences through a succinct 'road show,' culminating in a public event to showcase the plan," and annual review of the plan and its implementation by its "stakeholder's watershed management team/council." "The plan will also," it states, "contain the results of a buildout analysis to determine the potential for future non point source pollution sources."

More specifically, the project's vision includes:

"Conduct[ing] a watershed shoreline survey to assess obvious and potential sources of pollution."
"Conduct[ing] a series of six or more meetings with partners to identify current and emerging threats to water quality within the York watershed, and develop strategies to manage them."
Utilizing an outline prepared by Michigan State University to prepare its management plan.
"Creat[ing] GIS maps, images and data to depict information and recommendations presented in the plan."
"Develop[ing] a 10-minute Power-Point presentation to convey plan elements and the science/reasoning behind them."
"Tak[ing its] presentation on the road to town planners, Rotaries, planning boards, chambers of commerce, realtors, critical property owners, and other target audiences and individuals yet to be identified."
"Organiz[ing] a public event targeting property owners within the watershed to present the plan, explain its basis and benefits, and emphasize the individual landowner's role in plan implementation."

According to Pratt-Decker, such a project is now due because of the pressures of development in the region. "The York River watershed is a very valuable and sensitive habitat for both aquatic and land-based resources [animal and plant life]", she says, and these are now beginning to experience problems. Development, with more and more land disturbed and paved over, and more and more rooftops appearing, means that rainwater washes anything on the land into the river -- "bacteria, silt, toxic pollutants, oil, grease" -- disturbing still more soil in the process, and creating shoreline erosion.

At the same time, she adds, older septic systems in the watershed "are not always properly maintained or designed to meet modern sanitary standards," with the result that "a number of systems are chronically leaking pollutants into the York River."

As a result of both these kinds of pollution, the bottoms of parts of the tributary system of the York River, she says, are now showing low levels of dissolved oxygen -- a bad sign, oxygen in water being as necessary to life in water as it is to humans in air.

Samplings of water quality in the York River have been regularly made by various parties, but missing, says Pratt-Decker, has been any plan for comprehensive watershed management.

"So this," she says, "is a big deal" -- the more so as the state, she adds, which annually disperses between 12 and 20 federal watershed grants per year, has only recently begun to pay attention to watershed issues in southern Maine.

Last Friday morning (April 5), Pratt-Decker met with Barrie Munro, of the York Planning Board, Stan Moody, of the York Conservation Commission, and Americorps volunteers Cathy Walker and Andrea Leonard, who are working on the project through the WNERR, to review the history of York River water sampling to date.

This weekend Pratt-Decker will initiate the field-survey aspect of the project, in a plan of action that will also illustrate its community-based, cooperative nature. At 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 13, 37 students from the University of New England will meet at the Grant House and then disperse to scour the river, by boat on its lower reaches, and by foot on its upper reaches, looking for places where erosion, trash and debris, pipe discharge, and runoff from roads and lawns -- e.g., non point source pollution -- might have a negative impact on water quality.

Pratt-Decker expects that completion of this phase of the survey will take between three and five Saturdays, all told, and be complete by June. The results, she stresses, will be used now only to prioritize, and not to regulate.