Fisheries
From recreation to conservation: RIDEM director describes vision for state land and water resources for next 10 years
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W. Michael Sullivan and Louis Yip sign purchase and sales agreement for Blackstone River dam. Photo by Malia Schwartz. |
If R.I. Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM) Director W. Michael Sullivan has his way, the next decade in Rhode Island will see a return of alewives and herring to the Blackstone River, 10 new public piers, and a resuscitated Bay Islands Park system—this one with programs by RIDEM naturalists, a campground on Dutch Island, and “creature comforts” to support it.
Sullivan, speaking at the Blackstone Valley Visitor Center in Pawtucket in June, presented his vision for the future, and future management, of water resources in the state. He first addressed the question “How do we market what we have?”
His answer: access. “How many places do we have where we can enjoy the vista?” He enumerated the problems with public access: views marred by invasive species and a lack of facilities for northern Rhode Island residents to get to the upper Bay. He told the audience he was committed to building “a pier a year,” in the state, with the first one, at Plum Beach, at the former Jamestown Bridge.
He added that a proposed $85 million bond next year, which includes money for cesspool phaseouts, could include money for these access projects.
“One of the things we absolutely must do,” he said, “is have a public fishing, public access facility in downtown Providence,” adding that kids should be able to ride their bikes to the pier, take sailing or fishing lessons, and “build an appreciation of the assets we have.”
He called for revitalizing the Bay Islands Park system with ferry service and amenities, such as upscale services for boaters, a restaurant, or even an aquaculture facility, that would support the system. He pointed to the new Blackstone River State Park at the I-295 rest area that offers a Dunkin Donuts and recreational access as a model.
One challenge in creating access in the upper Bay area that RIDEM must address, he said, is contaminated sediments. While brownfields properties are being cleaned up as they are redeveloped, determining which company or companies are the source of contaminated sediments in the water, and are thus responsible for cleaning them up, is difficult. Still, Sullivan said, “We can’t create waterfront activities but tell people not to go in the water.”
Another of his goals, if the city will agree to it, is to build a green RIDEM facility on a brownfield site in Providence that offers public access. “We should practice what we preach,” he said.
In addition to urban issues, Sullivan spoke of the need to protect farmland, saying that “with conservation design, we can preserve the farm.” He described Richmond, where he himself has a farm, as having “seven villages that were conservation designed 250 years ago.”
He also called for “water pricing for luxury consumption” for excessive lawn watering and car washing, and opposed building a reservoir at Big River, which he said would destroy trout fishing and prime hunting and hiking land.
He spoke about attending a meeting in Baltimore on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cooperative effort by Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. He said the state has been impacted by global warming, as evidenced by the 3° temperature increase in Narragansett Bay over the last 50 years. He said that while the Bay supports the same biomass, the species have changed over the last 100 years from high-value fish and shellfish such as flounder and oysters to sea robins and skate.
“We need to modify our activities,” he said, and pointed to changes RIDEM itself has made, replacing its fleet of heavy SUVs such as Yukons with Ford Escape hybrids that increased gas mileage from 9 miles per gallon to 29. In the fuel savings alone, Sullivan said, RIDEM was able to order another vehicle at the end of the year.
Lastly he spoke about restoring fish runs in Blackstone River, whose lower four miles have four dams that blocked fish access to upstream habitat. Three of the dams had had passage facilities installed, and at the end of his talk, Sullivan signed a purchase and sales agreement with Louis Yip, owner of the fourth dam, which will allow RIDEM to install a passage there. “The alewives, the herring, even the American eel are coming back,” he said.
Sullivan’s talk, “Marine and Freshwater Resources: Managing for the 21st Century” was part of the annual Summer Community Lecture Series sponsored by Rhode Island Sea Grant and the University of Rhode Island Cooperative Extension/Nutrition and Food Sciences Department, and Slater Mill. For information on upcoming lectures on sea level rise and how it will impact shoreline homeowners, a seafood cooking demonstration, and a discussion of healthy seafood choices, visit seagrant.gso.uri.edu/news.