3/10/2011 ENVIRONMENTAL OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE Minutes

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COMMUNITY PRESERVATION FUNDING APPLICATION Town of Mashpee Project Description: Answer the following questions in the order listed. Be brief, but complete and include any supporting materials. 1. Goals: The preservation of Santuit Pond for recreational purposes, scenic value, aquatic habitat for multiple fish species as well as a traditional spawning area for herring, and its shoreline habitat for numerous birds and small animals. In addition to ongoing preservation of the pond's water quality, the proposed solution will reverse the deterioration of the pond, which has reached an extreme condition over the past 5 years. 2. Community Need: Santuit Pond has been suffering extreme cyano-bacterial algae blooms with potential to release toxins, every summer for the past 5 years leading to closure of the pond for multiple weeks nearly every summer. This situation has worsened over the past 20 years, to the point where the pond is in a eutrophic state due to release of excessive amounts of phosphorous bound up in the sediment beneath the pond water. The release of phosphorus occurs due to a lack of oxygen at the waterlsediment interface. Installation of solar powered long-range circulators will foster mixing of air from the surface down to the pond bottom, minimizing further release of phosphorus, and the water motion will degrade already established algae. This approach will require no electrical power (entirely solar powered), and no addition of chemicals (such as alum which has been used in 3 ponds on Cape Cod, with questionable effectiveness). The goals of this project address numerous General Criteria of the Mashpee CPC: i. Preservation of a popular and historical surface water body in Mashpee, used by its residents and many summer visitors for recreation, and one of the few remaining spanning grounds for herring on Cape Cod. ii. Is eligible for CPA funding as it relates to the preservation of open space (including surface water bodies), and the preservation of"land" for recreational use. iii. It will save resources that will otherwise be threatened, in the form of numerous species of fish, the aquatic habitat of those fish and water fowl, the spawning grounds for herring, and the shoreline habitat of birds, amphibians and numerous small animals. iv. It will preserve the ecology of the pond and prevent the ultimate result of the degradation process that often results in a massive fish-kill and eventually the continual discharge of foul smelling gases (1-I2S). iv. It serves more than one CPA purpose (as listed in ii above). v. This project provides a detailed line item budget of $325,000 (plus state sales tax, if applicable to a Town purchase, plus Town mooring fees for 6 portable circulators that float on the pond surface and are anchored). vi. There is a positive cost to benefit relationship in the form of stopping (and reversing) the documented decline in property values around the pond, and the associated loss of real estate tax revenues to the Town. (Decline of property values has been documented recently in the Mashpee Enterprise according to the Mashpee Assessor's office. Inspection of shoreline property values shoes a