A Note From The Helm MODELS MATTER The complexity of our world comes into focus almost every day. We experience or read about some weather event or condition, and we ask, “Is it natural or is it climate change?” Is this something “we” made happen? When it comes to the waters in and around Cape Cod, we know the answer. Thousands of us have gradually changed the ground and surface waters through our wastewater disposal. Water chemistry is now significantly different with increasing levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, other elements and contaminants. We have algal blooms in our estuary that turn the water brown. Our ponds and lakes are no No matter the cause, climate change and warmer longer pristine, and many are periodically closed due to conditions are having an impact. Water usage trends and cyanobacteria outbreaks. water saving devices have led to a near doubling of the As a society, and throughout history, we have relied on assumed nitrogen concentrations in our septic systems. models, “math” to help us understand and hopefully predict On the flip side, atmospheric nitrogen has declined as coal something. The best day to day example of this is weather plants have closed. forecasting. Models to predict the weather are good Change is not easy, but we are convinced that an adaptable, examples of a well-known aphorism in the 1970’s, “all models open-source modeling approach is what the Cape, the are wrong, but some are useful”. Forecasters never seem to Islands and the entire southeastern Massachusetts coast get the weather exactly right! need. No doubt, the “devil will be in the details”, and we In 2001, the late Dr. Brian Howes and his team developed DO NOT advocate going back to “square one”. Existing the Massachusetts Estuary Project (MEP) model to legal and environmental goals can be incorporated, and a determine nitrogen inputs in estuaries. At the time, this new model can be adopted to allow us to achieve the goal: model was groundbreaking and cutting edge. We believe Clean Water! We will know we have achieved success when it is still directionally correct. However, like the world in eel grass returns to our coastal waters. general, new data and changing inputs call into question this model’s long-term usefulness. Why? Why does a 30-year plan take 40 years to clean water? The MEP model is a “black box”, not “open source”. It is a Time-to-travel! “static” model. Yet new information is now available which is critical to our modeling approach and thus, our planning. The MEP model is used for some watersheds but not others. Currently, many watersheds have no models, while others use models developed independently. Cape Cod, the Islands, and the entire southeastern Massachusetts region need and deserve ongoing, adaptable modeling that includes the entire area. A federal agency, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) which does all the modeling for Long Island Sound, could do modeling for the entire region. (see box on page 3) “AI” and data processing have taken enormous steps, data inputs that heretofore took weeks or months to process can now be done in seconds. With billions of dollars of wastewater-related spending at stake we need an up-to- date and adaptive approach. 2 | Barnstable Clean Water Coalition | Fall/Winter 2025 BCleanWater.org