Exploring Solutions to Excess Nutrients: Restoring Cape Cod's Waters
Welcome to our second bulletin on the Environmental Protection Agency’s research to address excess nutrient loading in Cape Cod’s waters. This is a biannual update for interested community members. This team includes EPA scientists based in the Office of Research and Development and Region 1, Boston, MA, and many external research partners and stakeholders.
We have been working with our partners for the past two years to pilot and evaluate nitrogen reducing approaches that could ultimately be used to develop a watershed-level plan to reduce nutrient loading in the Three Bays Watershed of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where nitrogen is the main nutrient of concern.
While the past year has gone differently than we had planned, we adapted to pandemic-era science and adjusted our research so that we could still make progress on our experiments. We have had innumerous video conference calls to check in with our EPA and external team members, found ways to conduct some research virtually, and have made our way into the field for other experiments.
This issue of the bulletin provides updates since July 2020 on our efforts to tackle the nutrient loading challenges with our stakeholders in the Three Bays Watershed. If you’d like to read our first issue you can access it
here. As a refresher, septic systems are the source of 80% of the nutrient loading on the Cape. While these systems are designed to treat bacteria in wastewater, traditional septic systems do not remove much nitrogen, which then flows through groundwater to ponds, streams, and estuaries. Our team of biophysical and social scientists is working on several projects to identify scalable solutions to this challenge that are summarized in in our Project Updates. Our Deeper Dive section is about the progress of our enhanced innovative/alternative septic system research and our Scientist Spotlight is with Dr. Giancarlo Cicchetti.
