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The boardwalk to Barges and and Channel Beaches at the Coalition’s Canapitsit Reserve was recently installed.

The Boat Pumpout on Cuttyhunk is provided by the Coalition free of charge for boaters visiting the island. It is self-service and available to all until October 15. Coalition staff monitors the pumpout daily make sure it is kept tidy and orderly.

It encourages boaters to safely and properly dispose of their wastewater and to reduce the amount of untreated wastewater that would directly be discarded into the Bay.

In other Cuttyhunk news, a new wooden boardwalk leading out to the popular Barges and Channel Beaches at the Coalition’s Canapitsit Reserve has also been installed.

The boardwalk provides greater ease of access to the popular beach. The long walk gets very cobbly and uneven at parts, which has made it difficult for those with mobility issues. The boardwalk also reduces the impact of lots of beachgoers walking across the delicate barrier beach.

The boardwalk does not extend the entire way from the entrance gate to the beach access point, but rather just the final (and rockiest) 200 ft.

“If the boardwalk meets our expectations and fares well this summer, we hope to add another 200 ft. or so for next season,” says Coalition Island Stewardship Manager Craig Willey.

The Mattapoisett River Valley, spanning from Snipatuit Pond in Rochester to Mattapoisett Harbor, is one of Southeastern Massachusetts’ most important water resources. Over the last quarter century, the Mattapoisett River Valley Land Protection Partnership between the Coalition, the towns of Marion, Rochester, Mattapoisett, and Fairhaven, and the MRV Water Supply Protection Advisory Committee has protected thousands of acres of land to maintain the quality and quantity of the region’s drinking water supply.

In late May, the Coalition purchased a 33-acre farm in Rochester and helped secure a $350K state grant that would allow the town of Marion to purchase a conservation restriction (CR) on it. That farm is less than 250 feet away from the Branch Brook Headwaters and less than 3,000 feet from a Marion town well (#5). The towns of Fairhaven and Mattapoisett also have town wells in the vicinity and the Town of Rochester draws from the Marion well mentioned.

In addition to protecting a highly valuable drinking water supply, the land will provide passive recreation opportunities and provide habitat for rare species.

The Coalition also helped the Town of Dartmouth Water Department buy a large swath of land, most of which borders the Paskamansett River, from the Cornell family. We had secured funding from the state ($350K), the Town’s Community Preservation Fund ($250K). and an additional $200K in private funds. The town now owns the land, and the Coalition recorded a conservation restriction, which permanently protects the property.

The Paskamansett River Drinking Water Land Protection Project protects nearly 200 acres of open land over a critical public drinking water supply aquifer and remove an existing gap in the growing assemblage of protected land along the river. It is part of a strategy to increase protected lands in the Paskamansett River Valley, a key source of Dartmouth’s public drinking water.

The project acreage is located directly across the Paskamansett River from existing town Water Department lands (containing three groundwater pumping wells) and abuts other lands protected by the Dartmouth Conservation Commission and Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust.

Like the Branch Brook Headwaters land, this will provide appropriate public access for compatible passive recreation opportunities, have significant benefits to existing critical wildlife habitat, and protect water quality and aquatic habitat in the river and the downstream estuary.

The project property consists of eleven parcels of land in the area between the Paskamansett River and Tucker Road (a well-travelled road connecting to the commercial corridor of US Route 6 to the north) and includes 3,320 linear feet of direct frontage on the river, important wetland areas and forest.

The project boundary lies some 1,600 feet from one Dartmouth Town Public Supply Well; two more are not that far away.

For more on the Coalition’s collaborative efforts to protect the Mattapoisett River Valley, go here.

For more on the origins of the Coalition’s collaboration with the Town of Dartmouth to protect these 196 acres along the Paskamansett River, go here.

Town Maps of Rochester (left) and Dartmouth (right) show in red outline important land acquisitions made to protect town drinking water supply.

The Coalition’s Lilia Bartolotta, left, and Kristin Huizenga prep the loggers on the dock of Onset Bay.

Coalition staffers Lara Gulmann, Lilia Bartolotta, and Kristin Huizenga lug buckets of gear out to the end of the Onset Bay Center’s dock, where the first of many new water sensors will be deployed this season.

But the new logger will not be alone. They also send down the older version of a logger that has been used for years at OB1, as the station is called.

They check the housings, secure the sensors one last time, and drop both into the Bay so they come to rest 30 cm above the bottom. Someone walking out to the end of the dock may see the line with the Coalition’s logo displayed on it. But to the rest of the world, they go unnoticed, quietly doing their job to measure dissolved oxygen, salinity levels, and water temperature, the trio of measurements historically used by the Coalition to monitor the Bay.

There are many benefits to these autonomous loggers. They measure data at short intervals throughout the day. Volunteers measure the same data once a day in the early morning. With autonomous readers, the fluctuation of data within the day, based on factors such as sunlight, wind, and tidal activity, can vary, and is not caught by volunteers going once a day.

Coalition staff check these monitors regularly, to download data (self-reporting monitors using wireless technology are very expensive), check on the conditions and clean the devices if necessary. “Aquatic organisms love to grow on these,” says Bartolotta. “Barnacles, mainly, but also calcareous worms and tunicates.”

The staff spent time calibrating these monitors in the Marion location throughout the spring. The scientists say that the new loggers are better for integration with the volunteers.

Gooseberry Causeway is not affecting the flow of water to the Westport River or its water quality, and it is not causing or accelerating erosion at East Beach.

Due to long-held concerns that the Gooseberry Causeway and other human modifications were affecting the Bay shoreline and the flushing of the Westport River, the Buzzards Bay Coalition convened a team of scientists in 2022 to understand how this human structure interacts with the land and water around it, namely its effects on the beaches and water quality of Buzzards Bay between the Westport and Slocums rivers.

The comprehensive report used historic measurements, a rigorous two-year field campaign, and cutting-edge computer modeling technology to assess whether changes to the shoreline are due to the causeway or not.

The scientists, from Boston University, Woods Hole Group, and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, found that the Gooseberry Causeway is not affecting the flow of water to the Westport River or its water quality, and it is not causing or accelerating erosion at East Beach.

Part 1: Westport Coastline has been released. Part 2: Dartmouth Estuaries will be released by the end of the year.

History of the Causeway

A little over a hundred years ago, a sandbar walkable at low tide joined Gooseberry Island to the Westport mainland. In 1922, a simple causeway was built that was destroyed in the Hurricane of 1938. In 1943, the US Army established a WWII installation on the island and built a fortified causeway of boulders and concrete that remains to this day.

Now referred to as Gooseberry Neck, the combined causeway and island extend approximately one mile into Buzzards Bay.

The timing of Gooseberry Causeway construction coincides with a period  of dramatic changes to this stretch of coastline, leading many government officials, coastal scientists and residents to question whether this manmade construction may be contributing to some or all of these issues.

Findings

Gooseberry Island itself creates the counter-clockwise circulation pattern that affects the flow of water to the mouth of the Westport River. The circulation pattern would be the same with or without the Causeway.

East Beach erosion would be occurring with or without the presence of the Causeway.

Under climate change scenarios, the causeway still will not strongly influence sediment transport in the region. Models show that deeper water due to sea level rise will move the circulation cells closer to the beach resulting in more erosion/transport throughout lower Buzzards Bay. More storms mean more frequent events when the waves are big enough to move large amounts of sand.

An overview of the report providing more details on these findings can be found here.

The entire report can be found here: Hughes, Z., FitzGerald, D., Fagherazzi, S., Asik, T., Xie, D., Tas, S., Hein, C., Dongen, A., Shultz, M. (2025) Lower Buzzards Bay Sedimentation & Gooseberry Causeway Impact Study; Westport River Inlet and East Beach; Results Report 1. 96 pp.

The Buzzards Bay Coalition, along with partners from Boston University, Woods Hole Group, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, set out to study a series of scientific questions that focused on the Gooseberry Causeway and its effects on the beaches and water quality of Buzzards Bay between the Westport and Slocums Rivers.

Logan Mendes and kids aboard the Ernestina-Morrissey

Sixth graders sit cross-legged on the deck of the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey waiting for the ship to get underway for their daytrip into Buzzards Bay. Buzzards Bay Coalition Outdoor Learning Manager Carly Baumann asks the group how many are on board a boat for the very first time, and a sea of hands shoot up. She then asks how many kids are of Cape Verdean heritage, and a similar number of kids respond.

The Cape Verdean ties to the region are strong, with the Ernestina-Morrissey being the most symbolic relic to that historical (and present) community connection.  For decades through the middle of the last century, Cape Verdean immigrants transited the Atlantic aboard this ship enroute to family and a new life in cities like New Bedford, Pawtucket, Brockton and Falmouth and work on cranberry bogs across Plymouth County. Today, the exchange between people and culture continues between the Buzzards Bay region and Cape Verde.

Coalition educator Logan Mendes plays instruments with the kids at his station to get them warmed up. He talks about a former owner of the ship during the mid-1900s. Some kids’ heads tilt quizzically, thinking how coincidental it is that the instructor shares the same surname as this historical figure.

But it is no coincidence. Logan is the great grandson of that Henrique Mendes.

The Buzzards Bay Coalition is partnering with Massachusetts Maritime Academy (MMA) now to bring outdoor exploration programming to New Bedford Public Schools.

Lynn Connor helps a sixth grader record water data from their onboard testing.

The outings feature five working stations. Lynn Connor, a former Old Rochester Regional High School teacher, engages kids on the water quality station. There, they use modern equipment to measure water temperature, pH, and salinity, among other things. Jeannine Louro teaches the kids about the varied lives of the Ernestina-Morrissey, from fishing boat and Arctic explorer to immigrant carrier and finally, living history vessel. Logan teaches the “Life Aboard-Cape Verde to America” unit.

The final two stations—navigation and responsibilities of a boat’s watch (which includes hands-on knot making and signaling)—are headed by Captain Tiffany Krihwan and her MMA crew, all of whom have diligently prepared the Ernestina-Morrissey for this three-week barrage of inquisitive youth.

Krihwan has started a sail training program at MMA from the ground up and helped integrate a tall ship into its curriculum. “Working with these historic vessels helps individuals become far better sailors,” she says. “You really need to observe the fundamental principles of sailing.”

The students attend a station for twenty minutes each. They record their findings and make other notes in their personal Voyager’s Journal. The Ernestina-Morrissey sets sail from its homeport at the New Bedford State Pier in the mornings and the kids eat lunches out in the harbor before returning to port.

After successful pilot trips in May and June 2024 serving 376 third- through twelfth-grade students, New Bedford Public Schools collaborated with the Coalition and MMA for 15 days of trips this year, allowing us to reach 650 students. The plan is to extend the program for four weeks in 2026 and 2027.