Each new year brings with it a combined sense of excitement and anxiety about what the future may hold. These competing forces are very much at the top of my mind as the calendar flipped to 2024.
On the plus side, among other things, there is a great chance that 2024 will bring with it the end to two environmentally damaging proposed projects, the proposed multipurpose machine gun range (MPMGR) at Joint Base Cape Cod and the release of contaminated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay by Holtec.
There will be an unprecedented number of water quality restoration projects supported by state loans if town voters choose to move forward with wastewater management projects this spring. Momentum is building to increase efforts to protect from the housing bulldozer the critical habitats that remain both undeveloped and unprotected. APCC, through its Ecosystem Restoration Program, is poised to undertake restoration work in seven impaired wetland systems if our applications for funding from NOAA are awarded as hoped.
The anxiety comes in part because we can never see all the way around the corner to anticipate what comes next. That said, we know that someone somewhere is working on an idea, a bad one, that will challenge us for a response on behalf of the environment. That is what happened with Holtec and the MPMGR, and it will happen again. Beyond that we rightly wonder what the fate of alternative energy development will be. If we will have the means and the will to take on increasingly rapid changes to the climate that are already impacting important local resources. Will the Cape experience another bad year of cyanobacteria outbreaks, and will it be the pond that you care most about?
There is plenty to worry about and your list is no doubt different that mine, but that is not the part that matters. What matters most is our response. Here at APCC we have invested heavily, with your generous support, in building our programs and staff to be ready to respond to whatever the future holds for us. We have taken some educated guesses about where we can best serve the interests of the Cape’s environment. What you do is up to you, but the view from here is as it has been as long as I’ve been writing this weekly missive. The people who engage, get their hands dirty, and show up are the ones who decide much of what happens. That means it is up to us all to channel both our excitement and anxiety into productive action.
Environmental protection is not a spectator sport. If we want to experience good things in 2024, and beyond, we need to put in the work. The staff at APCC are back at it and ready to pull our weight in 2024. Are you with us?
