Better Days Might Be Ahead for Narragansett Bay Unless RI Politicians Follow Their Connecticut Counterparts

John Torgan, the Narragansett BayKeeper, is celebrating an agreement in Rhode Island to require two big sewage treatment plants to do nitrogen removal as part of their year-round treatment process. Hypoxia can be as bad in the Bay as it is in Long Island Sound, and nitrogen removal is equally important in the two estuaries.

Read down, though, and you’ll see that RI faces the same problem we have on the Sound: mandating nitrogen removal is one thing; getting the politicians to allocate the money so communities can upgrade their treatment plants is another.

Remember that Connecticut mandated nitrogen removal but in recent years has not put any money into the Clean Water Fund. The state helped identify the hypoxia issue, the state decided how and when each community had to solve it, but then the state said, “Sorry, that’s your problem, not ours.”