| Metal
trash cans, empty fertilizer bags, tires, tarps, abandoned
appliances and rusted petroleum drums. No one wants this stuff
next to the York River.
But
it's there, in a lot of places, and a handful of volunteers,
state and local officials are hoping to clean it up.
"It's
pretty hard to fathom all of this junk so close to the water,
and to what extent this could impact the river downstream
and the water quality," wrote AmeriCorps volunteer Andrea
Leonard of the site depicted in the accompanying photograph.
The
dumping ground is located about one-quarter to one-half mile
west from Brixham Road in Eliot on the York River, she said.
Leonard
is a volunteer leader at the Wells National Estuarine Research
Reserve in Wells. She is working on the cleanup project under
the direction of Vallana Pratt-Decker, the agency's new watershed
manager.
"I
know we have other sites like that one on the York River,
that's not the only site," Pratt-Decker, a former code
enforcement officer for the town of York, said this week.
A
team of University of New England student volunteers and local
environmental officials identified more than 60 potential
sources of pollution throughout the York River watershed during
an April 13 field survey by kayak.
The
preliminary results, released two weeks ago, will be verified
and then used to help devise a cleanup and management strategy
for the river and its tributaries, according to members of
the newly formed York River Watershed Steering Committee.
The
group's initial report lists 64 minimally to severely polluted
sites throughout the watershed - from an abandoned metal trailer
left in a ditch near Frost Hill Road, to an oil slick on Cutts
Ridge Brook - and everything in between.
"One
of the things that I was kind of surprised with were the ATV
(all-terrain vehicle) tracks through the river. That creates
a lot of erosion and oil slicks," Leonard said of her
fieldwork discoveries.
All
of the identified sites are sources of what environmentalists
call "non-point pollution" - pollution that is essentially
man-made.
"The
important context here is that the York River, like many of
the southern Maine watersheds, is at risk for non-point pollution
because of the intensive development pressure," Pratt-Decker
said.
In
the weeks ahead, Watershed Steering Committee members will
prioritize the polluted sites and work with affected area
property owners to clean up the debris, according to Pratt-Decker.
The
cleanup is likely to go a long way to improving water quality
in the watershed and the overall health of the area's ecosystem.
"The
York River does in some places at some times meet its water-quality
standards," Pratt-Decker said. "You can fish and
swim and clam in the York River but (only) at certain places
at certain times."
Environmentalists
suspect there are a "half-dozen to a dozen hot spots"
of pollution in the river, but Pratt-Decker declined to specificy
them until she and state Department of Environmental Protection
(DEP) officials verify those sites as part of the watershed
project, she said.
"What
the concerns are is that there are places and times that we
see elevated fecal coliform levels," she said. Fecal
coliform is bacteria in the waste of warm-blooded animals.
High coliform levels in the water indicate the existence of
disease-causing germs, she said.
The
erosion of natural buffers that separate the water's edge
from the land also troubles environmentalists. Without a vegetative
buffer to protect them, rivers and streams can become polluted
with pesticides, oils and other toxic substances, according
to Leonard.
Volunteers
will next survey the York River Watershed on May 16. Watershed
project members hope to educate the public about how they
can be more attentive to preserving the natural jewels that
are southern Maine's waterways.
"The
most corrective act is just education and asking (residents)
to cooperate with us," Pratt-Decker said.
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