Volume 6, No. 4

Promoting Cooperation to Maintain and Enhance
Environmental Quality in the Gulf of Maine

Gulf Voices
Well…there’s good news and there’s bad news

Art MacKay Photo: Jennifer Cameron

Our group is currently winding down a two-year study of the health of the St. Croix Estuary with funding from the New Brunswick Environmental Trust Fund, Environment Canada and others. For those who don’t know, in the sixties chemical dumping into the St. Croix virtually denuded the upper estuary and eliminated most of the traditional fisheries in the lower estuary and western Passamoquoddy Bay. When I surveyed the estuary last in the seventies, it was still a disaster.

Well, the good news is—to my amazement—the substantial reductions in industrial effluent discharges demanded by American and Canadian regulatory bodies and the oversight provided by the International Joint Commission have worked. Rockweed and associated periwinkles, barnacles and beach fleas have recolonized the upper estuary to the International Bridge at St. Stephen/Calais. Clam worms are starting to work the mud again, sand shrimp cover the bottom, and the dreaded green crab can be found scuttling about everywhere. Black ducks, cormorants, great blue herons, greater yellowlegs, geese and other marine birds are using the upper estuary in increasing numbers and raising their young there as well. Recreational uses of the river are increasing. Boating, seadooing and water skiing were common activities this past summer. Clearly the river is on the threshold of a come-back. Taken a little further, the estuary could well turn back into the multi-million dollar resource it once was. In fact, restoration of the river and the return of our fish runs could be the salvation for the economically strained towns of St. Stephen and Calais.

The bad news is, we carried out a barrage of environmental tests this past year. Unfortunately, there remain numerous seepages and outfalls with coliform test scores too numerous to count. Septic tank seepages are at critical levels in some localities, and chemical inputs are still of concern. More particularly, a recent spill of about 160,000 gallons of black liquor illustrated the poor containment practices that are still in effect and numerous late night releases from up-river facilities have been reported. It seems that the old “it flushes twice a day” mentality is still in effect and the upper estuary is, in reality, a dangerous place to play. Unless we change our collective attitude and move forward with rehabilitation of the river, we could well return to “the terrible sixties.”

No doubt about it, we have more work to do. We are starting our restoration efforts by engaging the citizens of the St. Croix River Valley. In conjunction with the Maine Coastal Program we are conducting a Stewardship Training Course that is a great success and a community watershed forum will be the vehicle for engaging the public at large. There’s non-point source pollution to clean up, municipal sewage systems to bring into the world of tertiary treatment, marshes to reconstruct, anadromous fish to bring back, people to educate, and much, much more. Like most of us involved with local NGOs, the task does seem overwhelming.

But we will prevail—send money!

In addition to his work as the executive director of the St. Croix Estuary Project, Inc. (SCEP), an organization that focuses on the environmental health of the international St. Croix Estuary, Art MacKay is a free-lance biologist and commentator. You can reach him at amackay@nbnet.nb.ca. Also check out SCEP’s new newsletter, the St. Croix Estuary Tides, online at www.scep.org.