Welcome to WAA, Herring Ponds Watershed Association!

Today’s blogger is Shalen!

Little Herring Pond public access point

Lee Pulis, of the Herring Ponds Watershed Association which was founded in 2007 as a volunteer neighborhood organization, was kind enough to take us on a tour of the Herring Ponds watershed last Thursday! The HPWA is WAA's newest member! This watershed is not a hydrologic watershed but a state-d
esignated area of critical environmental concern (ACEC), with politically designated boundaries (one of which is Rt. 3). The ACEC is an important area for recreation as well as for water supply, as most of its residents draw from the Plymouth-Carver Aquifer. In addition to sampling pond water and storm water runoff, the HPWA commits to educating residents about their watershed and promoting boating and recreational safety.

The highlights of this watershed are the Little and Great Herring Ponds. Little Herring Pond (I will use the abbreviation LHP for brevity) is at maximum 5 feet deep. Its northern waters never freeze, so aquatic plants abound and it is a great fish pond. Motor boats are not allowed on LHP, and because of this there are no invasive species which often spread by boats and their trailers.

Great Herring Pond (GHP), however is much larger: its waters span 376 acres and are at least 20 feet deep. It receives 80% of its water from the LHP. The state requires a 100-foot buffer zone for any construction around its shores, because of its designation as one of the great Massachusetts ponds. Of course there are many grandfathered homes all around the shoreline, so buffer zone stewardship education is a prime mission of HPWA. Carter’s River flows downstream from LHP to GHP.

At the Carter Beal Conservation Area

Our first stop in this watershed was the Ponds of Plymouth housing development on the western edge of LHP. We saw lots of large expanses of irrigated lawn with non-native decorative plants. Just off one of the development’s roads is Pickerel Pond, part of The Wildlands Trust.

Water recreation is an important attraction in the Herring Ponds watershed. This watershed not only boasts residential properties along the shores of both ponds, but also many parks and day camp areas for adults and kids alike. Two such properties are Camp Clark and Hedges Pond Recreational Area. The former is a YMCA day camp for kids, has horses, nature trails, and offers swimming in Hyles Pond. The latter is a recreation area open to the public on afternoons and weekends, and which used to be an church nature camp.

After a quick interlude, in which we allowed a portion of the pouring rain to pass, we headed south along LHP’s western shores and encountered considerable runoff from the rain heading into Carter’s River, the water body connecting the two main ponds.

We drove past Parcel 15, an area of inactive cranberry bogs, between LHP and GHP. The town missed the deadline of exercising first right of refusal to buy it, and there’s a battle as to whether this land will be reactivated and two more houses with septic systems will be built on the land nearby.The Plymouth Community Preservation Community has since met and indicated it has the funds and will encourage Selectmen to correct the mistake and preserve this area to protect area water quality and recreation. Keep an eye out for further updates.

From thereon we ventured to the LHP public access point, which leads to the northeast part of GHP, and at which was a flow gauge. The wooded path leading to this outlet was rife with horrid construction materials and used electronics dumping. A short distance away, I saw a rain garden for the first time (see right), near the shores of GHP, constructed as the surface part of an underground stormwater filtration system.

Further down GHP’s southwestern shores sits a Massachusetts Maritime Academy sailing facility, offering rowing and sailing lessons, among other recreational activities. This facility is also one of the few places in the world you can learn to drive an oil tanker by training on a 1/12^th working scale model. Pretty cool!

We next observed a few passing locations including a Native American burial ground, another flow gauge towards the end of the Herring River, a boat launch in Bourne, and the Carter Beal Conservation Area, which included a fish ladder.

We reached the Herring River’s outlet by late afternoon: it flows into Cape Cod Canal, and it is at this location that herring swim up the river near the Herring Run Recreation Center. This center provides people with a view of the river (and sometimes herring!), information regarding the contribution of herring to the watershed, the Sagamore Bridge, and a recreation road dedicated purely to biking and pedestrian activities, much like the Neponset River Trail that I visited several weeks ago. This trip was a refreshing and amazing one, one during which I learned how watershed recreation creates an active community among an area’s residents!

Want to learn more about the Herring Ponds Watershed Association or volunteer in any of their activities? Visit their website http://www.theherringpondswatershed.org/Home_Page.php and check out their landmark stewardship guide at http://www.theherringpondswatershed.org/uploads/HPWA_Stewardship_Guide.pdf.

See the following link to learn more about the Lower Neponset River Trail: http://bostonharborwalk.com/placestogo/location.php?nid=2&sid=63

Did You Know? Closed-Cycle Cooling and the Pilgrim Power Plant

“Did You Know?” Closed-Cycle Cooling and Pilgrim Power Plant

By Shalen Lowell

Photo from: Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger,

“Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant”

http://www.patriotledger.com/news

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Did you know that every day the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Massachusetts absorbs 510 million gallons of water from Cape Cod Bay? In operation since 1972 and owned by Entergy, the Pilgrim Station poses a continual threat to the surrounding ecosystem and residences, due to its outdated, once-through cooling system. Last May, Pilgrim renewed its 20-year operating license, and this action further motivated activists to unceasingly protest its ongoing harm to the ecological community.

Pilgrim runs on a once-through cooling system, in which it sucks in water  from the Bay. That water absorbs heat from the plant operations and is then discharged. This “once-though” water can be up to 30 degrees warmer than the existing water in the Bay, which not only harms species that prefer cooler water, but which also enables the growth of invasive species.

Pilgrim is required to install screens to prevent larger organisms from getting sucked into the plant. However, fish often get impinged (or trapped) on these screens, and die as a result. Some smaller organisms are sucked through the screens and cycle through the cooling system with the water, in a process called entrainment. Very few organisms survive entrainment.

In a closed-cycle cooling system, however, after the water that a plant takes in circulates through the system, it is recycled through the reactor instead of being discharged. The heat in the water is removed in the process and is released into the atmosphere. Closed-cycle cooling does not emit warm, polluted water back into its source.

Photo from: Paul Rifkin/Cape Cod Today,

“Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant”

 http://www.capecodtoday.com

/article/2013/01/22/16632-pilgrim-
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power-plant-closed-down-again

The Pilgrim Station sits on the Plymouth-Carver Sole Source Aquifer, which supplies drinking water to residences in the area. Pilgrim is continuously contaminating Plymouth’s aquifer by polluting its groundwater. One way in which this occurs is through expulsion of a radioactive type of hydrogen called tritium, which combines with the oxygen in the 
water to make it radioactive. Another concern is the plant’s waste-water treatment facilities on site, which emit nitrogen into the water and contaminate the aquifer.

The Pilgrim Plant is one reason there is a drastic decline in river herring, specifically blueback herring and alewives, and they are thus species of great concern. In an annual report, “Impingement of Organisms on the Intake Screens at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station,” submitted to Entergy in 2010 by its consultant Normandeau Associates, Inc., alewife were the second most impinged fish, with a count of 12,680 trapped in Pilgrim’s screens. Herring, a source of food for larger marine mammals, face many adversities in their habitats in southeastern Massachusetts such as dams, pollution, and impingement, all of which contribute to low numbers of herring returning to streams to spawn.

Cape Cod Bay Watch, “Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station Protest”

http://www.capecodbaywatch.org/2012/05/sagamore-bridge-protest/pilgrim-protest/

To draw attention to some of these issues surrounding the Pilgrim Station and to also celebrate World Oceans Day, Cape Cod Bay Watch sponsored a “Save Our Bay” Flotilla. This rally’s participants emphasized Pilgrim’s outmoded cooling system, suggesting its functionality is inefficient and harmful to the Cape Cod community. If Pilgrim were outfitted with a closed-cycle cooling system, its operations would reduce damage to Cape Cod Bay.

If you would like to volunteer and join the effort in improving water quality for the safety of your family and your environment, contact your local watershed association today. You can find out what watershed you live in and how to contact your watershed association, and learn more about the issues at www.watershedaction.org.