Our aging combined sanitary and stormwater sewage system simply cannot handle severe wet-weather events. In 1998, combined sewer overflows led to the closure of 14 beaches and thousands of acres of shellfishing beds in Narragansett Bay due to dangerously high bacteria levels. Although the primary responsibility for these efforts lies with local communities and organization, we should secure federal funding to support the Narragansett Bay Commission's plan to put an end to combined sewer overflows by collecting millions of gallons of sewage during heavy rain events and then pumping it to treatment plants after a storm has passed. Restoring natural habitat After 300 years of industrial development, much of the damage that has been done cannot correct itself naturally. We must take an aggressive, proactive approach to restore the salt marshes, eelgrass beds, fish runs, and other coastal habitat degraded over the years by the pressures of human development.
Federal resources can also help.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working closely with the Coastal Resources Management Council and several towns to bring back eelgrass habitat along the South Coast and restore fish passages in coastal waters. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration recently awarded a grant to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, CRMC, and Save the Bay to create an information system to help make decisions about habitat restoration throughout Rhode Island. Portions of the channel are so shallow that large vessels frequently must offload their cargo onto unmanned barges in the middle of the Bay. We need to maintain the Providence River channel if we want to avoid disasters like the 1996 North Cape oil spill, and we were reminded again over the past few months that access to the Port of Providence is also necessary to help protect our citizens from the threat of sharp increases in the price of home heating oil and gasoline. Yet, for more than a decade, we have seen the dredging of the Providence River become a never-ending saga of study upon study.