Rolling The Dice With Nemasket Herring

[tidehunter]

As many of you already know, The Wampanoag Indians are seeking Federal approval to locate a casino resort in Middleborough. One of the many environmental issues includes the plan to dump up to 1.5 million gallons per day of treated sewage effluent into the Nemasket River, just below the Oliver Mill fishway. As many of you also know, the Nemasket is host to the states largest Alewife run with an estimated 1-2 million fish returning anually to spawn in lake Assawompset. Currently the Nemasket recieves an average of 750,000 up to 1.5 MGPD of treated sewage from the Town of Middleborough Waste Treatment Plant. To add an additional 1.5 Million Gallons per day would cause the amount of treated sewage water in the river to be 50-75% of the total river flow (at low water periods). The Nemasket currently has problems with algea due to high levels of nitrogen and elevated temprature due to the treatment plant and other factors, including urban and agricultural runoff.

To endanger the herring population, which has already been decimated by over fishing and habitat degridation is, in my opinion, not an option. The best solution would be to NOT build a casino in Middleborough, barring this, there are also other methods of disposing the treated sewage.

During the Federal approval process, specificaly the environmental impact assessment, there will be a period of public comment. I encourage anyone interested in writing a letter to contact me. In the coming months I will be gathering information regarding the potental environmental effects of the casino. I will include any letters in a package that I will submit to the BIA (board of indian affairs).

I believe it is extremely important to stop the proposed wastewater treatment plan. Little or no study has been done regarding the effects it may have on the Nemasket Herring. The current population seem to be fairly stable, although far from historic levels. Rolling the dice with the states largest herring run is, IMHO, not a good bet.

You can e-mail @ scott@tidehuntercharters.com

[merch]

Not sure about the statistics but more sewage is never a good thing. If you haven't been to the Middlborough run it is definately worth the trip in April. And for those of you that think this river's herring population has nothing to do with your Narragansett Bay fishery think again. The Nemasket empties into the Taunton River which is the one that flows past Fall River into Mt. Hope Bay, into the Sakonnet and Narragansett Bay. It is the Largest run in Massachusetts which also makes it the largest run in Narragansett Bay. They all swim past us on the way there. Of course, with the harvesting ban on Herring in both states coupled with the recent explosion of menhaden, you'll be hard pressed to find a fisherman that knows what a herring is in five years never mind understanding the importance of them to the stiped bass population along with the need to preserve their habitat. Good heads up with the post. I thought we were done with destroying breeding habitats after the industrial revolution subsided anyway. Is this the start of the gambling revolution, but instead of european decendants building dams for power the natives want thier shot at destroying the habitat by pumping our crap into it?