List of Attendees Paul Stacey, John Storer, Rich Langan, David - PDF document

List of Attendees Paul Stacey, John Storer, Rich Langan, David Patrick, Dean Peschel, Lindsey Williams, Fred Short, Cory Riley, Terry Desmarais, Ray Grizzle, Krystin Ward, Robert Eckert, Kevin Sullivan, Doug Grout, Bruce Smith, Shannon Rogers, Heather Gilbert, Eric Schroeder, Chris Nash, Paul Geoghegen And PREP Staff: Rachel Rouillard, Kalle Matso, Abigail Lyon, Jill Farrell and Simone Barley-Greenfield About These Notes Readers will feel at times as though these notes are verbatim from the meeting. They should not be considered verbatim. Rather, we attempted to make the notes more conversational for readability. Please do not quote these notes as though it is a verbatim transcript. Sometimes, when PREP staff are not sure about name of the speaker, we will list the person more generically as “Committee Member.” 1

Kalle: Just a reminder that the TAC is a completely open process. Everyone is invited and everyone has equal standing. 2

- Be ready soon to mark your calendars for the next TAC meetings in March and April. April is in a different color because we expect that meeting to be more extensive—perhaps even take place over multiple days—than the usual TAC meetings. - That will be our last opportunity to review some of the bigger takeaway messages from the Data Report. 3

Kalle: As you can see, we have lots to get through today, and then we’ll finish by piloting an exercise around thinking in a more concerted way about stressors on oysters—don’t have the time today to do this for clams as well—as well as management actions that could potentially benefit oysters. 4

Kalle: Just a reminder that our focus here today has to be fairly narrow. We are committed to certain indicators and to how we’ve collected the data. What I need from this group is to talk about ways that we can present the data most clearly, and if there are ancillary studies that we should pull in to explain the data in the Data Report. It will be tempting to talk a lot about introducing new indicators and new research topics, but that will have to be secondary to the primary goal noted above. 5

Kalle: Now, I’ll hand it off to Chris Nash of the Dept of Env. Services; Chris manages the shellfish program. 6

Chris: Map of shellfish classification in NH tidal waters. What areas are open and which are closed for harvest. Dark green and light green are the open areas. For the indicators in the past report we focused on the estuarine areas and not the open coast. The coast is almost all open and not a lot of movement in temporary closures. The idea behind this indicator is that it can help us understand changes in water quality. 7

Chris: 2/3 of GBE is open; there are some temporary closures due to rainfall and WWTF issues. 8

Chris: For green area, we take GIS polygons and each polygon is designated as an oyster area; we look at number of days it could have been open and compare it to record of how many days it was actually open. Numbers going back to 2000 and up to 2011, from the last Data Report. 9

Chris: Here are numbers for the whole system going up to 2014… 10

Chris: …and here’s what the chart would look like with those numbers. We do have the numbers for 2015 but we need to make a decision about how to handle those numbers because of the results of the Portsmouth Dye Study, and I’ll show a map on the next slide. 11

Chris: Back in 2012, we performed a dye study at the Portsmouth WWTF to see its impacts on public health around the outfall. This was done because that plant is still operating as a primary level treatment plant, whereas the other plants in the area are at least secondary. (Portsmouth is now planning their upgrade to, at least, secondary.) When the results of the study came in, we decided that we needed to change the terms for recreational harvest in Little Bay (green area on the map). The dye study showed that on an incoming tide, the effluent would reach Dover Point in 4 hours and then go rapidly up through Little BayBecause of that study, we restricted harvesting to one day a week…Saturday only. That will change our numbers drastically from 303 to 39, meaning that this area was only open 12.9% of the time it could have been open. 12

Chris: The yellow highlighting underscores what I’m talking about here as we move from 2014 to 2015. Committee Member: Can you talk a bit more about the dye study? Chris: We did it because Portsmouth is a primary treatment facility unlike the other plants, which are all at least secondary. The idea was to assume that, at some point, they might have a disinfection failure. For this test, dye was released at 2:30 AM, and it took 4 hours for the dye to reach Dover Point. By 11 AM, we were seeing dye near Furber straight. If Portsmouth had a problem at 9:30 PM on Friday, it could make it into Little Bay without anyone knowing overnight. So, we’re telling recreational harvesters you can only go here on Saturday, and have to wait until 9 AM to make sure it’s all okay first. Now that will change when the plant gets upgraded. Terry Desmarais (City Engineer for the City of Portsmouth): With regard to the upgrade, we’re looking at December, 2019 for the initial stages to be complete. I also want to clarify that you only get 1 million fecal coliform when there is a failure of the disinfection system. The fecal coliform count is less than 14 on a max day if the system is working properly. Chris mentioned some of the other treatment facilities that have secondary treatment. With secondary treatment, even without disinfection, they have lower bacteria levels because the water is getting more treatment. Rich Langan: Chris, does the one day a week apply to oyster farms or just wild 13

harvest? Chris: It does not apply to oyster farmers. They can harvest any day, and the reason for that is they have to call me before they harvest. Since they’re calling me, I can check the conditions and let them know if there’s a problem. Rich Langan: How often does the disinfection system fail in Portsmouth? Terry: As far as I know, there have only been a few instances in the last couple of decades. Chris: I can only think of 2 big failures. Terry: Getting back to the issue of how to show the changes with the data…If there is a change in how this is calculated, it’s important that it’s documented so people have that context. 13

Chris: And here’s a look at how these changing numbers would look on a graph with the change in 2015. Cory Riley: This graph shows Little Harbor plummeting, can you explain that? Chris: There’s a whole other issue with Portsmouth and the WWTF; none of the plants are designed or required to treat viruses. At secondary treatment facilities, because of how long the water is treated, it just has less viruses; it could be as much as a thousand times less viruses. Because we don’t have standards,and Little Harbor is close to the Portsmouth outfall, we felt it was prudent to close Little Harbor because we just don’t have enough information to evaluate.. Cory: The indicator is tricky because there are two things you are trying to figure out; acre days can increase in two ways—policy changes and environmental conditions. You should probably acknowledge that somewhere. Dean Peschel: My comment is similar to Cory’s. Purpose of this table is to judge whether WQ is getting better or worse; including this change will create the appearance that WQ is getting worse when it truly isn’t. Paul Stacey: We have WQ indicators and response indicators. If we had data of bacteria indicators in GB then we would have a WQ indicator we can statistically look at. Instead we have a management response indicator. It could be framed and should be framed that way. Everyone will look at this graph and say WQ is in decline, but it’s not an indicator of WQ. 14

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Kalle: Three flats—common island flat, middle ground flat, confluence flat. Not sure why we are looking at just these three. Paul Geoghegen from Normandeau might know. Paul: I defer to Bruce Smith (NH Fish&Game), but I believe they are the most productive flats in the estuary. Bruce: That’s correct. 16

Kalle: This graph from the 2012 Data Report shows the number of clams in Hampton- Seabrook (adults). Adults greater than 50mm shell length. This graph does have new data, up to 2015. There’s no real significant change (still down below 10). Common Island flat had a nice little bump. Still low when you look at the big picture. 17

Kalle: This graph is for juvenlies and also has data through 2015. 18

Kalle: …and this is for spat. 19

Kalle: Here we have all three graphs at once. It seems to me if the spat are doing well but the juveniles aren’t doing well, it seems like something is happening to them once they settle--green crabs or neoplasia (soft shell clam disease)--something is happening. Paul G (Normandeau): In the softshell clam literature, you see a lot of big spat falls and then they disappear. Not sure why it happens. Just because we get a big spat fall doesn’t mean you will have a lot of adults or yearlings. Also, I would say that I’m not totally confident of our age groupings (i.e., that the 25-50mm are really yearling clams.) We took this from the nearest clam flats we could find in Gloucester. Length versus age is key for soft shell clams and is a research need. 20