Plummer scooped up about a cup of the liquid and — after returning a “Hello” from the owner of a nearby cottage — emptied it into a small plastic bag, sealed it and marked it with a sample number.
After reading the time, water temperature and GPS coordinates of the sample to Brunswick Marine Resources Officer Dan Devereaux, Plummer handed the bag to Fran Pierce of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, who added it to more than a dozen others in a cooler. Then Devereaux shifted the boat into gear and steered back into the New Meadows River.
At least six times each year, the DMR tests water quality samples from each of thousands of established sites all along the Maine coast according to a random sampling schedule established by the National Shellfish Sanitation Program.
They’re testing for high levels of fecal coliform bacteria — waste from human or animals.
On Wednesday, Plummer sampled water at approximately 30 stations from Harpswell Cove to the New Meadows River, including Long Reach, Gurnet Straights, the shellfishladen “Bull Pen” and Thomas Point Beach.
Sampling dates are scheduled in advance, Devereaux said Wednesday, “because they’re hoping one of those six times you catch some of the adversities” that could indicate poor water quality — such as almost an inch of rain that fell overnight Tuesday in the Brunswick area.
Excess runoff from that rain could lead to “hot spots” in the samples, which were tested Thursday at the DMR’s Public Health Division offices in Boothbay Harbor.
Today, DMR scientists will enter data from those samples into a formula that averages the numbers in each of many growing areas statewide. Trends in that data dictate which shellfishing flats in the state remain open and closed.
On Wednesday, the trio of state and local shellfish officials sampled the stations from the Brunswick Marine Patrol boat. But Pierce — who has worked for the DMR for 20 years — collects many of her samples from the shore. Brunswick and some other communities in her area — from the Damariscotta River to Stockton Springs, including North Haven, Vinalhaven and all of the smaller islands from Owls Head to the Damariscotta River — make her task easier.
The efforts here by staff, volunteers and clammers to clean up — and maintain — the water have paid off both for harvesters and the sustainability of the clamming resource.
In September 2011, the DMR reopened flats in Woodward Cove after a four-year closure. A rigorous sanitation survey by the town identified failing septic systems and, after they were replaced, the water tested cleaner.
Pierce said DMR staff conduct similar surveys up and down the state, sampling to see what might be causing pollution.
In Cushing, they traveled about two miles upstream before discovering a cluster of houses — “over 50 to 100 problems bordering on drainage ditches,” she said Wednesday. “It was a lot.”
A number of funding sources are available to help homeowners fix failing sewer systems, including a community grant program through the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
In Brunswick, rigorous local efforts to identify pollution sources and otherwise maintain clean water led officials to reopen the majority of Maquoit Bay earlier this spring, leaving clammers with nearly all the town’s flats to rake.
Doing so allowed the town’s Marine Resource Committee to increase the number of shellfish licenses by four to 61 — reversing a trend that in recent years saw pollution and red tide reduce the number of harvesters.
Devereaux said today that other than a few small closures near some streams, most of the town’s flats remain open to digging. Working with the committee, DMR and other municipal staff, he and Plummer will now focus on maintaining the open flats and — perhaps — establish a rainfall management plan to allow the remainder of Maquoit Bay to open conditionally as well.
bbrogan@timesrecord.com
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