Stormwater collaborative towns.

Towns in the Buzzards Bay Stormwater Collaborative.

About the Buzzards Bay Stormwater Collaborative

The Buzzards Bay Stormwater Collaborative was launched in 2016, as a partnership between the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program (NEP), the Buzzards Bay Action Committee (BBAC), and five municipal public works departments (Dartmouth, Acushnet, Fairhaven, Mattapoisett, and Wareham). This initiative was funded by a U.S. EPA Region I Healthy Communities grant. The purpose of the collaborative was to map stormwater infrastructure and monitor both wet and dry weather discharges (if present). An essential task of the program was to identify and precisely locate all stormwater discharges along the coast (both in and out of MS4 areas), and define the stormwater network connections to those discharge pipes and structures. In the process, we also wanted to identify failing structures such as catch basins filled with sand, damaged structures, or areas that flood during storms. To help accomplish this task and to ensure we had identified all existing discharges, we appealed to the public to send photographs of these sources through our Crowdsource page. The work under this grant was completed in 2018, and the NEP created a discharge report for each municipality.

In 2018, with SNEP funding from the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program, the Stormwater Collaborative expanded through a new partnership with the Massachusetts Maritime Academy (MMA). This new initiative added three additional municipalities (Westport, Marion, and Bourne). Under this partnership, MMA provided staff support and co-op students to work with Buzzards Bay municipalities and the Buzzards Bay NEP to continue the monitoring and mapping tasks. The NEP updated the municipal discharge reports based on the new data collected.

In January 2020, with a grant from SNEP, MMA became the lead in managing the Stormwater Collaborative. MMA also began entering into new agreements with Buzzards Bay municipalities for additional work beyond the scope of the SNEP grant. In 2020, MMA also received a $46,000 grant from the Massachusetts DEP to purchase a trailer and equipment to establish an illicit connection detection field investigation trailer that can be borrowed by Buzzards Bay municipalities for their own investigations. In 2021, the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, with guidance from the Buzzards Bay NEP outfitted the utility trailer, and produced training videos to be posted on YouTube. The trailer is stationed at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and made available to the Stormwater Collaborative municipalities.

The Stormwater Collaborative data reports for each monitored discharge are posted on the interactive map pages.

This website was established as a tool to share information and data from the Buzzards Bay Stormwater Collaborative.