Boston Harbor is getting a chance to demonstrate its resilience. The harbor is already recovering from the effects of hundreds of years of abuse, and damage will be further reversed when a new wastewater outfall bypasses the harbor itself for the more open waters of Massachusetts Bay. Moving the outfall is expected to have minimal negative consequences to the bay, with significant improvements in the sediment and water quality of Boston Harbor. The task of seeing that all goes as planned lies with the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA). The task of seeing that the MWRA has the tools to judge the monitoring component of its program falls to a unique body: the Outfall Monitoring Task Force (OMTF).  

Boston Harbor has been a sewage repository for more than 300 years. By the late 1980s, wastewater treatment was so abysmally ineffective that human feces washed up on the beaches, bottom-dwelling animals disappeared from patches of the harbor bottom, and the harbor was a national shame. The system was so overwhelmed and broken down that by 1986 only 75 percent of the wastewater flowing out of the Deer and Nut Island treatment plants was treated. 

Much has happened since then. 

Following a federal court order, in 1985 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts set up an independent agency to re-form the system. This agency, the MWRA, quickly planned and implemented one of the largest civic improvement projects in the United States, a project only now approaching completion. 

Among other actions, the MWRA greatly increased primary sewage-treatment capacity and ended the dumping of sludge into the harbor. Full secondary sewage treatment is planned to go on-line in October 1997. One aspect of the improvements has generated much controversy. When a 9.5-mile­long tunnel dug under the harbor begins operation in 1998, it will deliver 350 million gallons per day of treated wastewater into Massachusetts Bay-an environment that is far cleaner than Boston Harbor. 

Outside Boston Harbor, Massachusetts Bay supports a rich, healthy marine ecosystem. Fifteen miles from the planned outfall, Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary teems with whales and seabirds. 

Some citizens (particularly Cape Cod residents acting through an organization called Stop the Outfall Pipe, but also some scientists), worried that the outfall might adversely affect water quality in Massachusetts Bay, Cape Cod Bay, and Stellwagen Bank, and cause a decline in the richness of the animal population. 

The public expressed an array of concerns: What would be in the wastewater released by the treatment plant? How diluted would the discharge be at the outfall site? Would organics and toxins poison the benthos? And would the fertilizing influence of wastewater from 2.5 million people spur so much algal growth that zooplankton and microbes feasting on the algae would cause oxygen levels in the water to drop to dangerous lows? Would currents carry nutrients into Cape Cod Bay, causing toxic algal blooms? Were endangered right whales at risk from some or all of the above? 

Other worries centered on perturbations in algal community structure, toxic contaminants, human pathogens (bacteria and viruses), suspended solids, plastics, and grease. 

Although the MWRA had funded studies to help decide the outfall's location, not enough research had been done on Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay for MWRA scientists to sufficiently understand pre-outfall (baseline) conditions. Without baseline data, they would be unable to meaningfully assess any changes that the outfall might cause. 

"Up until recently, compared with Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound, Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay haven't been of much interest to the academic research community," says Jerry R. Schubel, president of the New England Aquarium and current chairman of the OMTF. 

Massachusetts Bay's official protectors include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). In order to discharge wastewater, the MWRA must have a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit from the EPA. Monitoring of the outfall is a provision of the permit. The problem was how to be sure monitoring would address those critical issues on which the health of the harbor and bay might turn. 

The solution was to form a body of scientists and representatives of government agencies and citizen groups to oversee 

the MWRA's work. This group-the Outfall Monitoring Task Force-was the inspiration of MIT Sea Grant's Judith Pederson, who was then in the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management. 

Pederson, the first chair of the new task force, drew on a major National Research Council (NRC) report that codified a process for marine environmental modeling. 

"The task force gave the monitoring program added importance," Schubel says. "It is a combination compliance monitoring program and environmental monitoring program." 

Pederson is now manager of MIT Sea Grant's Coastal Resource Center, which provides coastal managers with scientific information about marine environments. She and her colleagues have just completed an MIT Sea Grant­funded study on predicting the effects on Boston Harbor sediments of moving the outfall. This research is directly related to the MWRA's monitoring program. Pederson continues to serve on the OMTF. 

In contrast to citizen monitoring groups with science advisory oversight, such as the Falmouth Pond Watchers (which was started and supported in its first years by Woods Hole Sea Grant), the Maine/New Hampshire Sea Grant­led Great Bay Watch Program, and Rhode Island Sea Grant­led Salt Pond Watchers, the OMTF oversees state government activity (the MWRA), is funded by the MWRA, and is officially backed by both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the EPA. The group reports to the Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs. 

"Monitoring has become part of the federal court order," says Michael Connor, head scientist of the MWRA's environmental quality branch. "The task force is supposed to certify to the state and to the EPA that the monitoring work is good." He adds that the OMTF is "a group of experts looking over our shoulders and telling us what the consequences of the data we're collecting are." 

Working with the task force, the MWRA set up a monitoring program to determine the pre-outfall status of Massachusetts Bay and used models to predict the impact of the outfall. The planning process took more than a year, as the committee identified the issues that needed to be addressed, the questions the MWRA would need to answer, and finally, the best procedures for monitoring. The OMTF and MWRA agreed to monitor in four general areas: effluent, water column, benthic community structure and sediment chemistry, and living resources (such as the health of lobsters and winter flounder). 

"There were two major contaminant issues. The first is toxins and how to monitor them around the outfall. The second is nutrients around the outfall-nitrogen and phosphorous. The first effect of that would be to fertilize plankton growing in the area. This is a difficult measurement to make," says Connor. 

Baseline studies will help detect perturbations due to the outfall, as opposed to natural changes, such as storm impacts or changes of river flow or circulation. A baseline understanding would also contribute to knowledge of the bay's rich coastal and near-coastal habitat. Some research is funded directly by MWRA as part of the monitoring; other studies are indirect, but help fill in scientific background. Special projects include research partnerships between the MWRA and Sea Grant programs at MIT, WHOI, Rhode Island, and Maine/New Hampshire. 

What makes the monitoring plan unique, Connor explains, is a built-in contingency plan. In most environmental plans, he says, officials write predictions and go ahead with the project. They don't revisit the validity of those predictions. 

The contingency plan has "caution levels" and "warning levels" for about 65 environmental parameters. "When monitoring data come in, we evaluate the numbers against warning levels and caution levels based on state water quality standards, predictions in the Environmental Impact Statement, and the expert opinion of the task force," says Connor. 

According to Pederson, the OMTF's big issue is, "Is the MWRA answering the questions? How much more baseline monitoring do you do before the outfall gets turned on? How do you assess what the MWRA told you, and are you doing the right thing? What is a meaningful change? What is statistically significant? What are the responsibilities of the MWRA, the state, or the federal agencies?" she says. 

For instance, soft sediments near the outfall move around, so how far away from the out-fall should the MWRA monitor sediment? 

Another issue is how long the MWRA must conduct monitoring before it can establish the baseline against which future valuation can be measured? According to Schubel, "You need to monitor long enough to encompasses all natural variability in most phenomena in terms of the outfall." 

One particularly difficult question has been primary productivity. How will the MWRA know whether algal growth near the outfall is beginning to get out of control? The original monitoring plan called for addressing this issue by looking at light penetration and chlorophyll concentration, both of which are easily measured indicators of the abundance of algae in the water. However, neither parameter measures photosynthesis well, and photosynthesis is a better indicator of algal activity. So the task force asked the MWRA to measure photosynthesis using carbon dioxide fixation, which is slower but more informative than light penetration and chlorophyll concentration. In consultation with the task force, MWRA staff scientists are now working on faster methods that reliably measure true photosynthesis. 

The outfall will be on-line by October 1998. Then, the baseline period will be over and monitoring for impacts will begin. "Now is the time, conceptually, to go to the balcony and really see what we've learned and what changes we should make for the post-discharge phase," says Schubel. 

Carolyn Levi is a communicator in the MIT Sea Grant College Program.