Association to Preserve Cape Cod

Pilgrim Heights. Photo by Sue Machie

What I'm Thinking...

Beware the Secret Meetings

by Andrew Gottlieb, APCC's Executive Director

The Massachusetts National Guard plans to pay the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to conduct a discussion of the impacts of the proposed multipurpose machine gun range. Maybe that is a good idea, maybe it isn’t. What is not a good idea, and is in fact a fatal flaw, is conducting the meeting in secret. There will be no opportunity for the public to hear what is said and to know who is involved or what their affiliations are. There will be no public record of findings and therefore no way to know if what is asserted after the meeting reflects what was actually said at the meeting.

Simply put, this smells. It seems clear that the timing of last week’s announcement of a self-funded session with the NASEM is intended to enable the Guard to mollify anyone concerned with their full steam ahead efforts to sign a construction contract before the end of the month. The persuasion campaign probably sounds a lot like this: “Don’t worry about the contract, we have the NASEM looking at the issues and they will give it a clean bill of health.”

Anyone paying attention in the Healey administration should know, and now has fair warning, that the results of a self-paid private meeting with no set of verifiable findings will not reassure anyone that the legitimate concerns raised by locals and the EPA have been addressed. If anything, this proposed session is just another in a series of already documented efforts by the Guard to sideline and remove the EPA from the discussion.

The Guard had a choice. They could have partnered with EPA to jointly fund a neutral party to conduct a technical session open to the public that produced a set of fully documented and supported findings. Such a meeting, regardless of the results, would have had credibility; the Guard’s secret closed-door approach has none. Rather than easing the path to the signing of the construction contract, the Guard’s approach heightens concerns that arise whenever the public is excluded from critical government deliberations.

APCC Ecosystem Restoration Program

Source to Sea: Connecting Cape Cod’s Waters and Communities

APCC is getting underway with work to support five regional habitat restoration projects. This work is supported by an award of $15 million from NOAA’s Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience Grant. The vision is to restore the ecological function of rivers, retired cranberry bogs, and salt marshes from their headwaters to the coastal estuaries. Collectively, an estimated 220 acres of wetland habitat, 181 acres of pond habitat, and 2.2 miles of river and shoreline habitat will be restored from source to sea!

These are the project sites:

Oyster Pond (West Falmouth) - 3.1 acres of salt marsh, and 7 acres of tidal pond
Red Brook (Falmouth/Mashpee) - 1.4 miles of river and 23 acres of former bog
Quashnet River (Mashpee) - 3,900-ft. stretch of river, 44 acres of former bog
Weir Creek (Dennis) - 120 acres of upstream wetland habitat
Hinckleys Pond (Harwich) - 30 acres of former bog, 500 ft. of shoreline, and 174 acres of freshwater pond

Above: Map of Cape Cod showing the location of the individual restoration sites and the impacted watersheds.

The efforts will restore habitat for fish, shellfish and other aquatic resources, including improved fish passage for diadromous species like river herring, brook trout, and American eel. Native wetlands will be restored, improving ecological diversity and water quality, and increasing Cape Cod’s resilience to climate change.

APCC’s Ecosystem Restoration Program will lead this effort, working in close collaboration with many regional partners and communities. Community engagement and outreach are integral parts of the project, with the goal of supporting improved collaboration, community input, and capacity building across the Cape’s coastal communities. Project funding will support a diverse range of services across our partner network, including:

$890K to APCC for staff funding and expense over four years for these projects
$327K to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe to fund three staff over four years and support community engagement around the Red Brook and Quashnet projects
$99K to WBNERR for community engagement and training
$525K to the town of Falmouth to assist with permitting and final design of the replacement of Oyster Pond culvert in West Falmouth
$500K to the towns of Falmouth and Mashpee for land acquisition
$926K to the town of Mashpee for the Red Brook Road culvert replacement
$4.74 million to the town of Mashpee to restore the upper Quashnet River
$4 million to the town of Dennis to replace the Weir Creek culverts along Lower County Road
$1.6 million to the Harwich Conservation Trust for the restoration of the Jenkins and Warner bogs at Hinckley Pond
$1.4 million in other contractual expense to support these projects, including Weir Creek and Red Brook river and bog restoration

Beyond the NOAA award, the project partners have leveraged an additional $5.25 million in other funds to complete this work, including funding from the Cape Cod Conservation District, Environmental Protection Agency’s Southeast New England Program (SNEP), the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Multi-year funding of this scale is unique and hard to come by. APCC’s Ecosystem Restoration Program’s goal is to fill critical gaps in capacity and funding around restoration efforts here on Cape Cod. With this award, APCC has been able to secure the funding needed to see these projects through to completion. APCC has over 55 years of experience developing our scientific expertise, capacity, and partnerships. This award is the culmination of much of that effort and will support the environmental and clean water initiatives we continue to advocate for on Cape Cod.

Cape Cod Regional Pond Monitoring Program

Above: John-Tyler Percy, APCC senior pond technician, and Dr. Julie Hambrook, APCC pond and cyanobacteria program manager

Changing Seasons Means Changes for Ponds

As the summer season on the Cape comes to an end, the Cape Cod Regional Pond Monitoring Program continues on through the end of October, with select ponds being monitored in November. Water quality data, measuring parameters such as temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and nutrient content, will continue to be collected for all 50 ponds previously selected for monitoring by the Cape Cod Commission and APCC as part of the Freshwater Initiative.

This program is largely made possible due to the generous time and help provided by volunteers who join our two technicians, Emma Hazel (that's me) and JT Percy, in their canoes to help collect the data (demonstrated in the photo above by our very own Dr. Julie Hambrook). Despite whether a volunteer is knowledgeable about ponds or not, we are always asked what it is we are looking for.

While this is a three-year program that is designed to inform us as to which of the protection and management strategies are better for specific ponds, returning to each pond on a monthly basis has allowed us to observe more subtle changes. For example, we observe changing water levels and different amounts of plant growth. But the distinct feature we are looking for is whether a pond is stratified or not. When the monitoring season began in March, most ponds were mixed, meaning they were roughly the same temperature throughout. However, as the winter winds slow down and the air warms up, many ponds form layers that tend to remain throughout the summer, distinguished by different temperatures and oxygen content throughout the water column. Now, as the air temperature cools and with breezier days ahead, we can expect some ponds to start mixing.

So far, the 2024 pond monitoring season has gone smoothly and has been successful. We are looking forward not only to seeing how these ponds change or remain the same in the next few months, but to also witness the beginning of the fall season in these beautiful natural places.

Sometimes Nature Bestows a Garden Gift for the Day: A leafcutter bee has found a safe place for her nest at APCC's headquarters.

The hollow railing with a small hole out of sight, makes this a desirable safe place for this leafcutter bee's brood. She is in the family Megachilidae, and unlike other bees that collect pollen on their legs, she collects pollen on her abdomen that she uses to provision the egg cells that will be food for her emerging larvae. They will develop over the next several months and emerge as adult bees in early spring.

In case you missed it, here's the webinar we hosted last week.

Take Action to protect the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve

If you've already written the governor, thank you!

The Massachusetts National Guard, acting through the Massachusetts Military Division, is once again seeking bids to construct a multipurpose machine gun range (MPMGR) on top of the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve.

Please write Governor Healey today

and demand that she direct her staff to cancel this bid solicitation.

Please use the state's contact form to send the governor a message (see the link to the state's website below). Here's a sample message you can copy and paste into the comments box on the state form:

Dear Gov. Healey,

I am writing to urge you to use your authority in putting a stop to the multipurpose machine gun range proposed for the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve. I am very concerned about the Massachusetts National Guard’s recent transparent efforts to prevent existing project funds from expiring on September 30 by opening up another bidding process and securing a construction contract. A construction contract signed before October 1 would enable the Guard to continue to try to force the MPMGR on Cape Cod residents who are justifiably concerned that the project threatens the Upper Cape’s only source of drinking water.

This action by the Guard to advance contracting of the project is a further breach of the public trust and the commitment by your administration—which was agreed to by the Guard—that the project would not move forward until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has completed its work on the Sole Source Aquifer study and the state’s Environmental Management Commission has reviewed the project. Please use your authority as governor to order the bidding process to stop and to put a halt to this ill-conceived project. Thank you.

Link to state's website: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/email-the-governors-office#email-the-governor-&-lt.-governor-using-this-form-

We'd like to exceed 1,000 emails to Governor Healey,

demanding that she ensure this project does not go forward.

APCC's Cyanobacteria Monitoring Program

Our cyanobacteria monitoring map remains live for 2024. Results are displayed on the interactive map. For a list of ponds being monitored through October, click here. For any information on Brewster ponds, email Marty.Burke@brewsterponds.org. You can sign up for cyanobacteria bloom alerts here—and receive a notice when a bloom is detected, except for any occurrences in Brewster.

A Cape Cod Native Plant-selector

~ to help you choose the perfect native plants for your garden.

Email membership@apcc.org and we'll send you a CapeCodNativePlants.org decal.

Hyssop-leaved Boneset

Eupatorium hyssopifolium

Guidelines for Cape-friendly Landscapes - an APCC publication

The Guidelines gives homeowners steps they can take in the design and maintenance of their properties that will support pollinators and birds, manage stormwater, conserve water, and protect the Cape's water quality. This 40-page booklet is beautifully illustrated by Marcy Ford with content that is easily digestible and supported by numerous resources for additional learning.

Thank you for this important book! Hopefully everyone of us with a yard will read it and put it to use! - Vicky Titcomb of Titcomb Bookshop

We've enjoyed creating it and hope it will help you with ideas to help you steward your piece of Cape Cod and maybe foster an environmental ethic in the decisions we all make in our own managed landscapes. Get your copy here—and maybe one for a friend?

We are grateful for the several retail shops that are partnering with us to make this publication more widely available: Brewster Book Store, Birdwatchers General Store, Crocker Nurseries, Wellfleet Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary, Cape Abilities Farm, Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, the Cape Cod Lavender Farm, Heritage Museums and Gardens, Titcomb's Bookshop, Sea Howl Bookshop, Soares Flower Garden Nursery, and Eight Cousins Bookshop.

If you are a retailer and would like to sell this publication at your store, contact Kristin at kandres@apcc.org.

You can also view the book's content as a pdf on our website.

The Pollinator Pathway Cape Cod is a group of organizations promoting native plants and pollinator-friendly land care practices to create a boat load of safe oases for our native bees, butterflies and a whole host of other pollinators that are crucial to the health of our ecosystems.

Join us! It's easy. There are no fees. You just need to pledge to ADD native plants, SUBTRACT a little lawn, AVOID yard chemicals, especially pesticides, and LEAVE the leaves. And, help us spread the word. Please get on the map to show your support of pollinators on Cape Cod!

You can purchase now your 9-inch aluminum Pollinator Pathway Cape Cod sign at Hyannis Country Garden, Crocker Nurseries, Brewster Book Store, Orleans Conservation Trust, and

Cape Abilities Farm.

If you are a retailer, and you would like to sell the signs, you can order online here, or email pollinators@apcc.org.

APCC Merch