Last month, Scientific American magazine and WBUR released an excellent mini-documentary on the nitrogen pollution problem. Titled “A Yellow Tide on Cape Cod,” the film is one of the best summaries of the issue and the challenges facing our communities that we have ever seen.

Everyone who cares about Buzzards Bay should take 11 minutes to watch it.

Click here to watch the full video.

Because, while the focus of the film is on Cape Cod, the damage being done to our Bay by not cleaning up wastewater pollution; the solutions available; and the significant costs associated with the fix are all the same on the SouthCoast. The small size of its estuaries and the population pressure on the Cape have made the crisis more urgent there, but that is where the significant differences end.

Nitrogen, primarily from residential septic systems, flows invisibly out of our backyards through groundwater and into our estuaries – whether that’s the Westport and Slocums Rivers in the west or the Weweantic River in Wareham. The solution – in most cases, expanding access to Wastewater Treatment Plants – is simple, but costly.

The film includes references to Buzzards Bay Coalition collaborators and water quality indices modeled on our Baywatchers Water Quality Monitoring Program.

Javier Lloret, a scientist at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole and Buzzards Bay Coalition research collaborator, makes a compelling and clear case for why action on Nitrogen needs to happen now and the risks of waiting.

The Association to Preserve Cape Cod’s State of the Waters report referenced in the film utilizes the Coalition’s Bay Health Index in ranking nitrogen impairment of waters across the Cape as well as our direct data collected in Bourne and Falmouth.