Casco Baykeeper Waterkeeper
Alliance Founder Joe Payne’s Maine Way
In the fall of 1991, two months after accepting the job as the Casco Baykeeper in his native state of Maine, Joe Payne attended his first meeting with the six other Riverkeepers, Soundkeepers and Baykeepers destined to become the founders of Waterkeeper Alliance. “I was awestruck as each Waterkeeper described the daunting battles they were winning,” Joe recalls. “Each was making history and setting new precedent for the Clean Water Act on behalf of their waterbody.”
Driving home, he wondered how their approach would work in Maine. Hauling polluters to court can be very effective. If you win the case you can stop pollution and generate recognition for the organization. But Joe takes a very long view of his watershed, “Lawsuits may reap only temporary benefits, as polluters look for other ways to avoid cleaning up.” Plus, there simply weren’t that many big polluters in Casco Bay to sue.
There was a paper mill, a power plant that operated only during peak power demands, and runoff and discharge from 12 small cities and towns around the Bay. Those 12 towns together had six sewage treatment plants and 100,000 people – a very different landscape from the other Waterkeeper programs. Most importantly, perhaps, Joe “knew that our community would quickly tire of an organization that sought out people to sue.” Litigation would remain a tool in his toolbox, but didn’t fit as the lead strategy for cleaning up Casco Bay. Knowing that other Waterkeepers used different approaches when appropriate, he wondered, “How could we achieve the same results in Maine, which was – and remains – to stop pollution?”
In many places, environmental activists are like Davids battling corporate Goliaths. Mike Herz, former San Francisco Baykeeper, insists, “Polluters live up on the hill, hiding out in offices heavily guarded by lawyers. If we want to talk to them, we have to sue.”
In contrast, Joe kicked off his fight against pollution in Casco Bay by talking with his neighbor. “You see the owners of local business at PTA meetings or the Shop’n’Save,” says Joe. “The reason residents live in a state whose seasons are winter, mud season, and the 4th of July, is Maine’s incomparable natural beauty.” The shared environmental values of those who live, work and play along Casco Bay, and their centuries-long connection to the sea, allowed the Casco Baykeeper to focus on a solution-oriented model of protecting his waterway. With the exception of the paper mill, all the polluters in the bay were locally owned.
Casco Baykeeper began by identifying the sources of pollution and approaching responsible parties to work with them to end the pollution. If they did not respond, he next went to the regulatory authority and demanded enforcement. The last step, only when all else failed, was to sue the polluter. “This approach enabled us to accelerate our actions and go beyond simple compliance with laws by working with parties instead of against them,” explains Joe. “We’d save the lawsuits for those who wouldn’t work with us or dragged their feet.”
Casco Baykeeper has made extraordinary progress cleaning up Casco Bay with this community-based approach.
Building Credibility With Quality Data
Friends of Casco Bay (FOCB) was founded in 1989 by a group of concerned
citizens after the release of a report called Troubled Waters, asserting
that Casco Bay was one of the most polluted estuaries in the nation.
The claims were not well documented, however, and no one had a handle
on the specific pollutants entering Casco Bay. There were concerns about
sewage, potential oil spills, and the number of recreational boats the
bay could handle. Yet no hard data was available on the health of the
bay.
A Maine native, marine biologist, licensed boat captain, research diver
and the grandson of a Portland fisherman, Joe Payne was hired in 1991 as
Casco Baykeeper by Friends of Casco Bay, the parent organization of the
program. With a wealth of local knowledge, Joe quickly established himself
as a frank, honest advocate who made sure he knew the facts before he spoke.
Using Data to Stop Pollution
Joe knew he needed data to determine the environmental conditions in polluted
parts of the bay before advocating for change. Joe needed the facts to
justify forcing businesses and municipalities to spend money to change
their practices.
So Casco Baykeeper launched a volunteer water quality monitoring program to collect baseline data on water temperature, salinity, pH, water clarity and dissolved oxygen at multiple sites around the bay. He was determined to train his “citizen scientists” as rigorously as professionals. Under his guidance, the Friends of Casco Bay water quality monitoring program was among the first marine programs in the nation to receive EPA’s approval for its Quality Assurance Program and standards of data collection. Although dozens of volunteer monitoring groups now exist in Maine, the only volunteer-generated data the state uses in its annual water quality report to Congress is Friends of Casco Bay’s.
The data proved invaluable against the corporate giant, Sappi Paper, a South Africa-based pulp and paper mill on the banks of the Presumpscot River emptying into Casco Bay. The paper mill was the bay’s largest single source of pollution for more than 100 years. Not only did the nearby town of Westbrook reek of pungent exhaust from the plant, the river below the mill was a dead zone. In 1999, after two years of intense negotiations with Sappi attorneys, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection was about to cave in to the company’s demands and issue a Clean Water Act permit allowing the paper mill to continue polluting the river and Casco Bay.
The permitting process was opened for public comment for 30 days. Once complete, the permit would have allowed Sappi Paper to pollute Casco Bay for at least another five years. The Casco Baykeeper and environmental advocates from the Presumpscot River wrote lengthy rebuttals to proposed license limits. Joe recalls, “The weight of our argument – based on the sampling we had done – was so compelling that the state improved every parameter of the license.”
Public opposition to the permit was so intense that Sappi Paper executives didn’t publicly fight the permit. Instead, Sappi closed the largest polluting division, the pulp mill, to avoid investing in environmental upgrades. It claimed that environmentalists made it too costly to continue business, although the company made similar upgrades at other plants around the world. Normally such an accusation against environmentalists would raise public outcry, but the immediate improvements in air and water quality diverted the attention of area residents. Within days the air lost its fetid smell and two months after the pulp mill closed the reinvigorated river ran cleaner than it had in generations. Wading birds, fish, frogs and other wildlife appeared, as did hikers and paddlers, buoyed by the rapid and remarkable recovery of the lower Presumpscot River.
Opening Maine Clam Flats
One thing about a public asset (i.e. nature) is that it can be difficult
to identify who is responsible for making changes to protect it. In 1992,
49 percent of clam flats in Casco Bay were closed to harvesting by pollution
threats. Friends of Casco Bay sampled for fecal coliform to identify
and eliminate pollution sources keeping the flats closed. It took two
years of persuasion, but Joe Payne finally convinced the Maine Department
of Marine Resources to analyze water samples collected by well-trained
volunteers. Some of the flats had been closed since the Eisenhower Administration
simply because the state lacked the manpower to conduct water quality
sampling. Today, only 13 percent of Casco Bay clam flats remain closed
to commercial clamming.
Friends of Casco Bay’s Clam Flat Restoration Project also researched the productivity and predation of clam flats, seeding selected flats with thousands of clam spat and testing ways to protect juvenile clams from voracious green crabs. The model Joe helped develop was emulated along the entire coast of Maine.
First On the Water: Oil Spill
Portland Harbor, in the heart of Casco Bay, annually ranks as one of the
Eastern Seaboard’s top oil-receiving ports. In his early years
as Baykeeper, Joe worked closely with port officials to improve safety
procedures for oil spill prevention and remediation, encouraging training
and collaboration among many different stakeholders.
On the morning of
September 27, 1996, the collaboration was put to the test when the oil
tanker Julie N passed through the drawbridge into Portland Harbor. The
tanker, loaded with 8.8 million gallons of fuel oil, struck one of the
bridge’s concrete pilings. The impact damaged four tanks,
discharging 180,000 gallons of oil into the Bay, marking the worst spill
in the harbor’s history.
Joe Payne was among the first to reach the
scene, and his dogged efforts made him the eyes and ears of the recovery
effort. After 36 hours, it was apparent that the clean-up crew was losing
the battle to contain the spill against shifting wind and tides. Joe
contacted the Coast Guard Captain of the Port to alert him that more
people and boats were needed. The Captain of the Port, Burt Russell,
brought Joe to meet with the representative of the responsible party,
the shipping line that owned the Julie N. The Coast Guard Commander
introduced him by saying, “This
is the Casco Baykeeper Joe Payne. If he’s not happy, we’re
not happy.”
Within hours, 14 more vessels and 140 additional workers were brought in to combat the spill. Joe Payne and the rest of Friends of Casco Bay’s staff and volunteers helped recover injured birds, surveyed the Bay for environmental damage and monitored the effects of the spill. Thanks to the port’s disaster preparations, an unprecedented 78 percent of the spilled oil was recovered, a remarkable feat considering a 15-20 percent recovery is usually considered success. Maine’s governor Angus King and the U.S. Coast Guard recognized the Casco Baykeeper’s leading role in the recovery effort.
Confronting Cruise Ship Pollution
Public support was critical when battling the cruise ship industry over
a proposed state law curbing cruise ship pollution. In October 2002,
Friends of Casco Bay and the Maine Conservation Voters Education Fund
hosted a forum on Pollution Solutions to Cruise Ship Discharges, attended
by nearly 100 legislators, candidates and local residents. National speakers
and citizens discussed the impact of cruise ships legally dumping partially-treated
sewage and “gray water” from galleys, sinks and showers in
Maine’s coastal waters.
The public forum became the catalyst for state legislation. Joe participated in stakeholder meetings, legislative hearings and work sessions to help frame the language for a bill to ban cruise ship discharges. He was successful in defeating the cruise ship industry’s proposal to implement a non-binding (i.e. voluntary) memorandum instead of a law. Working with the Maine Conservation Voters Education Fund, Friends of Casco Bay countered industry pressure with an email campaign by hundreds of Maine citizens, urging legislators to regulate cruise ship pollution. In 2004, a state law passed, marking the success of a two-year effort to educate residents and state legislators about cruise ship pollution. Because of Friends of Casco Bay and Casco Baykeeper’s efforts, Maine will become the first state to ban the discharge of treated sewage, gray water and treated oily bilge water.
Persistence
Pays
In 1992, Joe heard about a meeting scheduled with the Portland Water
District and its engineering consultant. A decree directed the city to
decrease discharges from combined sewer overflow (CSO) pipes that carry
both stormwater runoff and raw sewage directly into the bay during heavy
rainfalls. The consultant was hired to examine Portland’s 42 CSOs.
Some would be eliminated, others redesigned to reduce polluted runoff
into Casco Bay by 90 percent.
Joe attended the meeting, and although many curiously glanced at him, no one challenged his presence. Soon Joe was making recommendations on dealing with pollution from the city’s CSO pipes. The largest CSO, at Fall Brook, flushed an average of 140 million gallons of wastewater into Casco Bay every year. The consulting engineers recommended turning parts of the stream into a giant cement culvert. Joe protested their simplistic solution, “It was a brook before we interfered with it. Make it what it once was!” The city and its engineers soon recognized that Joe was gracious, but tenacious. When momentum slipped, Joe kept pressuring the city. After 12 years and over $50 million, in 2004, the resurrection of Fall Brook was complete. Today, miles of naturalized stream weave a ribbon of green through Maine’s most populous city.
Movement
Joe Payne has seen significant changes in his time as the Casco Baykeeper.
He says, “We will continue to eliminate sources of pollution, but
the Bay is still suffering from polluted runoff. Today, eastern Casco
Bay is challenged by coastal development, while the more populated western
Bay suffers from toxic pollutants carried in by snowmelt and stormwater
runoff. We have to do more.”
San Francisco Baykeeper emeritus Mike Herz, now a Maine resident himself, acknowledges that Joe’s kinder, gentler approach is best for Casco Bay. Maine’s independent-minded citizens don’t like to be told what to do, but given the opportunity to help out a friend or a community, they pitch in wholeheartedly. Most have a deeply-rooted social conscience, and they don’t pass civic responsibility off to their neighbors.
The same can be said for the Casco Baykeeper. In 1998, Joe Payne received the City of South Portland’s Spring Point Light Innovation & Leadership Award, given for contributions that benefit the community for at least a generation. In presenting the award, Town Manager Jeff Jordan said, “When Casco Baykeeper Joe Payne sees a problem, he doesn’t stand on the shore and complain or call authorities. He wades in and finds a solution. Joe has set a new standard for working cooperatively with business and government to protect the environment.”
Joan Benoit Samuelson, winner of the first Women’s Olympic Marathon in 1984, gave perhaps the best, and most brief, assessment of the work of the Casco Baykeeper and Friends of Casco Bay. When asked why she devotes considerable energy to the board of Friends of Casco Bay, she simply replied, “Because they DO stuff!”
Keeping Pollution Out of the Water
A woman once asked one of Joe’s colleagues, “If you are the Waterkeeper, then where are you keeping the water?” He replied, “In the public eye.” Outreach projects such as field trips, citizen forums, publications, extensive media coverage and storm drains stenciled with “Don’t dump! Drains to Casco Bay,” helped rally the community around Casco Bay. Education and outreach are important but ancillary elements of a successful Waterkeeper program. Joe cautions that, “Talking about the issues is not enough. What distinguishes Waterkeepers is that we stop pollution.”
Casco Bay
• Casco Bay has 578 miles of shoreline, 785 islands and 229 square miles of water.
• More than 850 species of marine life have been identified in Casco Bay.
• Water from 41 communities flows into Casco Bay from as far away as Bethel, Maine.
• One of every eight Maine residents lives in the 12 communities that border Casco Bay, and one of every four state residents lives within the Casco Bay watershed.
• Casco Bay is impacted by the stormwater runoff from 41 communities, the treated waste from 17 effluent discharge permits and 42 Combined Sewer Overflows, as well as accidental or intentional discharges from 700 large ships (tankers, fishing boats, cargo vessels and cruise ships) and approximately 5,000 recreational boats that visit Casco Bay annually.
• Portland Harbor in Casco Bay handles more than 20 million tons of crude oil and oil products annually.
Rick Dove