What's the Problem?
The problem is too many nutrients – nitrogen in our coastal waters and phosphorus in our fresh waters. Algae slicks, fish kills, and offensive odors are a few of the symptoms of degraded water quality caused by too many nutrients. These conditions make it unpleasant for Mashpee residents and visitors to use our local waters for swimming, boating, fishing and shellfishing.
The Mashpee River has been one of the primary focal points of this issue, dating back to concerns raised in the early 1980s that resulted in the Town purchasing conservation land in an effort to slow down the pollution.
Popponesset Bay and Waquoit Bay have been the focus of several studies, including those most recently done as part of the Massachusetts Estuaries Project, that show signs in these areas of low dissolved oxygen, loss of benthic (bottom dweller) communities and habitats, loss of eel grass (home and nursery to fish and other important species) and overall eutrophication (over fertilization/overgrowth of algal and other plant life) that blocks out light and consumes oxygen that native species need to survive.