Harboring
a Fascination with Marine Science
Professor
Discusses Effluent Outfall Pipe in Massachusetts Bay
James Shine, assistant professor of aquatic chemistry in the Department of Environmental Health, was just starting graduate school in 1988 when then-presidential candidate George Bush labeled a heavily polluted Boston Harbor the "harbor of shame." The embarrassing condemnation not only helped Bush push aside his opponent, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, but also fed Shine's interest in marine science.
"Nobody really knew how Boston Harbor or Massachusetts Bay functioned," remembered Shine. "Scientists were needed, and I was interested in learning how science is used to make decisions about the environment."
Today Shine is an expert on the harbor that sparked his academic career, and his knowledge is in demand now more than ever as the Boston Harbor clean-up project enters a new and somewhat controversial stage that could affect the entire Massachusetts Bay.
Until last fall, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) discharged treated wastewater into Boston Harbor, but in September officials opened a 9.5-mile long tunnel that diverts the wastewater into the larger Massachusetts Bay.
The pipeline measures 24 feet in diameter, a breadth through which more than 20 tons of waste travels each day. The last mile and a quarter features smaller pipes that further dilute toxins in the effluent to levels considered unharmful. Officials have stated they don't anticipate any significant effects on the bay, and the MWRA has undertaken a large monitoring program to ensure the bay is not harmed.
But with the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary less than 15 miles away from the discharge site and Cape Cod due south, experts agree that monitoring the influence of discharges on the bay ecosystem is important. To that end, Shine works on a scientific advisory panel to the MWRA. He is intrigued by what the new outfall pipe may mean to Massachusetts Bay.
For one thing, Shine points out, Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay are different ecosystems. Boston Harbor is an urban estuary with an average depth of just 30 feet. The harbor is not particularly good at flushing contaminants out, and with strong winds off the ocean, pollution can and has reached the shoreline.
Massachusetts
Bay is a marine coastal system and much larger than Boston Harbor. With
an average depth of 100 feet, the bay is more than three times deeper
than the harbor and comes with a wider range of temperatures that affect
the way that effluent settles in the environment. Some of the wastewater
may get carried out to sea or south to Cape Cod (some citizens of Cape
Cod were so concerned about the potential flow of pollutants to their
shoreline that they organized a failed protest to stop the construction
of the pipeline).
How the effluent disperses into the ecosystem is important. An infusion of nutrients from the waste may alter the food chain, a phenomenon known to marine scientists. In the early 1990s to the horror of lobstermen, lobster in Boston Harbor seemed to stop reproducing shortly after the MWRA stopped discharging solid waste into the water. Some experts now suspect that the lobsters fed on the waste and that the removal of the discharge ended the lobsters' main source of nutrients.
The nutrients could also potentially serve as a food source for toxic algal blooms, says Shine. The rivers that pour into the bay not only serve as sources of fresh water but also as conduits for the tiny organisms that spawn toxic red tide blooms. These organisms require nutrients to grow, and the new outfall pipeline will disperse organic material into the path of these organisms as they float out to sea.
"Is it wise to put nutrients in the middle of that plume?" asked Shine. "We don't know yet. Much depends on variables such as the interaction of wind speed and direction with prevailing ocean currents."
Such variables remain under study. Shine believes that the same collaboration among scientists and policymakers that made the Boston Harbor clean-up possible can go a long way to achieving a rigorous, scientific understanding of the implications of sewage diversion into Massachusetts Bay.
Shine is currently researching pollutants not in the water but in the sediment of Boston Harbor and other harbors. He is crafting criteria for the Environmental Protection Agency that would measure pollution by amounts in sediment, not just in the water itself, giving a more accurate picture of the ecosystem.
The project captures his philosophy about the role of ecology in public
health: "The study of human health cannot be separated from the ecological
setting in which it occurs," he said. "If we don't understand
how things move through the environment--modifying both the magnitude
and pathways of exposure--if we don't understand these processes, then
we will never develop fundamentally sound strategies that reflect the
links between human and ecological health and are protective of both."
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Shine First Recipient of Ecology Award for Work by Young Researchers James Shine is the first-ever recipient of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry/American Chemistry Council Early Career Award in Applied Ecology for his work on the transport and fate of substances in aquatic ecosystems, specifically marine sediments contaminated with heavy metals. In a statement, the award's sponsors said, "Research efforts such as Dr. Shine's have the potential to provide decisionmakers with the type of information needed to prepare appropriate guidelines to protect human and ecological health." Shine accepted the $100,000 award--the largest given by the society--during ceremonies in November. |
