Nitrogen scientist to be honored at Buzzards Bay Coalition meeting

When Joe Costa and Brian Howse decided to start a water monitoring program at the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program in the early 1990s, they had hoped their work could be used to meet crucial water data needs. Years later, the data that has been continuously collected is helping scientists understand nitrogen’s impact on climate change.

Though Howse no longer works there, Costa is the program director at the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program, located in East Wareham. The program is an advisory and planning unit of the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, and receives funding from and is a part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Estuary Program. Using a system of citizen volunteers who collect data in assigned areas weekly, the program provides data about the health of watersheds in the area.

Costa, along with three others, is being honored for his work Thursday evening at the 27th annual Buzzards Bay Coalition meeting in Mattapoisett. He will be presented with a Guardian award, which recognizes leadership or outstanding service in the cleanup, restoration or protection of Buzzards Bay.

Costa said he and Howse combined Costa’s own work with nitrogen pollution, and the system behind Howse’s pond monitoring in Falmouth, set up a few years earlier. Until the two started the program, there was no system in place from which to gather nitrogen information, Costa said.

“We set up the water quality monitoring program to meet some very specific needs,” Costa said. “We not only wanted to monitor how degraded each embayment was, but knew we would be taking management action.”

And take management action they did. Costa said the data the program has collected over the years has been used to demonstrate the impact of nitrogen in the community, and spur action on the part of local leaders. For instance, Costa said, in the early 2000s, the data collected by the program was used to argue for reducing the concentration of nitrogen in Wareham’s sewage treatment plant.

“They upgraded the plant in 2005, based on our recommendations,” Costa said. “Now, it’s the best in [Massachusetts] for reducing nitrogen.”

But the data collected is not only used once, and then filed away on some dusty shelf. Costa said the data collected is currently being used by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to evaluate climate impacts of nitrogen released into the environment from various sources.

Costa has also been working closely with the Buzzards Bay Coalition for the past two years to convert the data into a format that can be widely used in the scientific community.

“There’s a lot of good studies coming out of that data set from making it widely available,” Costa said.

The coalition will hold the meeting between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at Camp Shining Tides at Camp Massasoit in Mattapoisett. Presentation of the Guardian awards and the coalition’s formal meeting will follow a reception with members and Coalition board staff. The event is free and open to the public.