Foam pollution cleaned up from Mattapoisett salt marsh [PHOTOS]
The salt marsh behind Horace Field’s home in Mattapoisett used to look like it was covered with freshly fallen snow. Except it wasn’t snow – it was broken pieces of polystyrene foam.
These fragments of foam were coming from Leisure Shores Marina, located directly across Brandt Island Cove from Field’s salt marsh. The marina’s floating docks were held up with large squares of old, deteriorating foam. The outdated floats had been breaking apart for years, causing pieces of foam to wash up all along the cove’s shores.
After two years of tireless local advocacy, the marina agreed last year to replace its old foam floats and clean up Brandt Island Cove’s salt marshes. Today, the salt marshes fringing the cove’s quiet shoreline are free of foam debris.
The salt marsh on Brandt Island Cove in Mattapoisett is now clean of foam pollution after several years of advocacy by local resident Horace Field and the Coalition.
Prevailing winds would push pieces of foam across Brandt Island Cove from the marina into the salt marsh behind Field’s home.
Coalition Senior Attorney Korrin Petersen worked with Field to advocate for the salt marsh’s cleanup and support the town’s efforts to require the marina to remove the foam floats.
The marina combed the cove’s salt marshes last winter and picked up all pieces of foam larger than 2 inches. A few pieces remain here and there. “You have to look for it, though,” Field said.
Field tried for several years to draw attention to the foam pollution in the salt marshes on Brandt Island Cove. “When I got together with [the Coalition], that finally pulled the cork and got things done,” he said.
“I’m overwhelmed with happiness,” said Field (with his dog, Piper) of the salt marsh cleanup. “It’s back the way it used to be.”
Field received a Buzzards Bay Guardian Award for his unwavering advocacy on the cleanup of foam pollution from the salt marshes along Brandt Island Cove.