Water Quality Report Spring 2024
Don Williams, Water Quality Committee Co-Chair

Photo of Sunrise? Over GHP from Anne Jordan
I am very pleased to report that this spring a Permeable Reactive Barrier (PRB) will be installed in the Carters River between Little Herring Pond (LHP) and Great Herring Pond (GHP). The hope is that the PRB will remove enough phosphorus to prevent future cyanobacteria blooms in GHP. Many thanks to David Gould and Kim Tower of Plymouth’s Department of Energy and Conservation (formerly Marine and Environmental Affairs) for their efforts on our behalf.
The PRB project is fully underway and on schedule! The Team will submit permit applications to the appropriate state agencies in March with issuance of permits anticipated shortly thereafter. The PRB will consist of water-permeable bags filled with phosphorus binding material. The bags will be installed in a manner to allow for fish passage as well. The PRB will remain in the river throughout the months of July and August. During that time, SMAST consultants will conduct water quality and flow readings upstream and downstream of the PRB on a weekly basis to monitor the efficacy of phosphorus removal.
Meanwhile, the HPWA Management Implementation Committee is working on developing a testing program to learn more about watershed soil and ground water phosphorus levels. We have taken soil samples for phosphorus testing the LHP bog and on the northeast and northwest LHP shorelines and they are quite different from each other. Preliminary discussions with experts suggest this may be significant and that it should be relatively easy and inexpensive to add to our data bank. Moreover, they agree that the resulting knowledge could be very useful.
In addition, the Water Quality Committee will start our 2024 monthly quality sampling program in April (Tom O’Brien will be putting his boat in the water in March!), to continue through and including October. Thanks again to David and Kim for funding this important effort. HPWA will continue to underwrite the LHP Bog to GHP phosphorus and nitrate testing program as well as the E. coli testing during the summer swimming months. This testing program will advance our effort to understand the watershed dynamics and improve water quality.
Don’t hesitate to contact me (508 833-4355 or donald_r_williams2003@yahoo.com) if you see cyanobacteria or anything else that looks unusual. With luck, this will be the last year that we must worry about cyanobacteria!
Awesome news! Thank you.
We are so excited about how much work has been accomplished . A huge thank you to all people who have worked so hard at finding solutions to the Cyanobacteria problem!