Mary Cerullo, who has worked with Friends of Casco Bay BAYKEEPER Joe Payne for 13 years, says she likes to describe him as “gracious and tenacious.” He has a “work-with” attitude, she says, which has made it possible over the past 20 years for him to maintain connections and respectful communication with people from all walks of life—fishermen and politicians, government officials and non-profit directors, homeowners and business owners, scientists and academics. All have played a part in his efforts to identify and implement strategies to achieve Friends of Casbo Bay’s (FOCB) mission: “To improve and protect the environmental health of Casco Bay.”
As for the aptness of “tenacious,” Payne, a Portland native who fished with his grandfather out of Peaks Island and went on to become a marine scientist and grassroots organizer, affirms that when the going gets tough in negotiations, he never thinks of backing off. “If someone is determined to continue to do something illegal or detrimental to the bay, it makes me more determined and resourceful,” he says. “I will reach further outside the boundaries to pull something in that will tip the argument in the bay’s favor.”
Payne has been the driving force behind FOCB achievements, which include creating mobile pumpout services for recreational boats; having Casco Bay declared a federally designated “No Discharge Area”; passage of a state law that prevents cruise ships from discharging gray water into the bay; gaining enforcement of a court-ordered mandate to stop the flow of combined sewage overflows (CSOs) into Casco Bay during heavy rains when stormwater combines with raw sewage and industrial waste to pollute the bay; relocating 35,000 lobsters to save them during dredging in Portland Harbor; recovering 78 percent of the oil spilled in the 1996 JULIE N. tanker accident and working for oil spill preparedness; establishing a water quality monitoring program which has helped identify and eliminate sources of fecal coliform pollution, making it possible to reopen many productive clam flats; developing “BayScaping” to reduce homeowner use of fertilizers and pesticides in the Casco Bay watershed; and expediting state legislation that requires the DEP to set limits for nitrogen levels in coastal waters.
These accomplishments have received the greatest amount of attention including many prestigious awards, but Payne says that oddly, when he reflects on his 20 years with FOCB, the smaller victories stand out. Services come to mind like determining the source of a mysterious oil leak that greatly diminished the quality of life in a Portland neighborhood, or helping a Long Island woman who had made seven phone calls to no avail to connect with the right person to stop illegal dumping into Casco Bay waters. “It’s those smaller things, and above all, the people,” Payne says—”the people I work with at FOCB who make it a joy to go to work, the people who have brought us problems, the people in municipalities and departments who stand up and go above and beyond—they are the best part of it.”
One of the longest running issues tackled by FOCB has been pollution of the bay by combined sewage overflows (CSOs). “We’ve been working with the city of Portland for over 20 years on this,” Payne says. FOCB won a considerable victory in 2008 when it helped convince the city to commit 61 million dollars to reduce CSOs, and in 2011, a large turnout of FOCB supporters were instrumental in persuading the city to agree that work on this stange of the project had to be completed in 15 years, rather than the 30 which had originally been proposed.
“There is progress,” Payne says. “Thank God. I’m not that patient. I do look to understand the importance of the incremental progress,” he adds, “and take satisfaction from that, but I never take my eye off the ultimate goal, to keep moving the project forward.”
During the past two years, FOCB has intensified its focus on coastal acidification, ocean acidification exacerbated by nitrogen in coastal stormwater runoff (see “Wanted: Green Slime Sightings” September, 2010). FOCB is assessing its effect on clam flats in the bay by examining the relationship between pH levels at the flats and their productivity.
Payne says it is a constant battle to educate the public that nitrogen from non-point sources (stormwater runoff from lawns, agriculture, industry and car emissions throughout the 958 square mile watershed that extends to Bethel) affects the bay’s health. The nitrogen feeds an overgrowth of microscopic algae, which, when it dies, is broken down by bacteria that use oxygen in the process and then release carbon dioxide into the water, diminishing the pH level and increasing acidity.
Research on the effect of ocean acidification on clam populations by Dr. Mark Green, a professor at St. Joseph College and oyster grower, has shown that at 6.8 pH, baby clams dissolve because they are unable to obtain the calcium carbonate necessary for shell development from the mud flats where they settle to grow. Adult clam shells become pitted in low pH water, but they can be harvested. “When we got the first hint of ocean acidification and its effect on shellfish,” says Payne, “we said, ‘Wow, how is that affecting us?’ We knew from 20 years of water testing there had been changes in the pH of Casco Bay.”
Then, they began to hear from clam harvesters about non-productive flats—flats that until recently had been productive. Always mindful of the health of clam flats in the bay and their importance to the bay area economy, in 2011 FOCB initiated a pilot study of 14 flats. Research Associate Mike Doan says it revealed that the nine non-productive flats had a pH below 7.8, the five productive ones a pH above 7.8. This year, they plan to sample 25 additional locations with more sophisticated instruments that will make sampling faster and accurate to the hundredth rather than tenth degree.
There are always new problems on the horizon. One that Payne is watching concerns the possibility that tankers, which have been bringing in crude oil that is piped from Portland to Canadian refineries, could instead come into Portland Harbor carrying ballast water. They would pick up crude oil piped to Portland in a reversed pipeline and transport it to other refineries. “The ballast water would become an issue,” Payne says. “Ships have never come here with ballast water. What will they do to ensure we don’t import an invasive species? We don’t want our coastal economy changed because of sloppiness with ballast water. If tankers are coming here with ballast, we will definitely be involved.”
The tankers, the nitrogen levels, the CSOs—there are always continuing and emerging challenges to the health of Casco Bay that depend on FOCB’s attention and Payne’s “work-with approach.” “A lot of people picture me out on the boat doing Baykeeping work,” he says, “but the reality is, problems are solved on land and at meetings that are constant year round.”