May 7, 2024 — After a storm wiped out Luke Sebesta’s Dartmouth aquaculture business in 2022, he was looking forward to purchasing 20,000 seed oysters this spring to get it back up and running. But this March, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries announced new restrictions on shellfish beds in parts of Buzzards Bay. Now, his re-opening of his Nonquitt oyster farm — Buzzards Bay Oysters — is at a “standstill.”
“It’s making me question whether it’s even worth it,” he said.
On March 12, the state announced new regulations of the shellfish beds surrounding the New Bedford and Fairhaven wastewater treatment plant outfalls — the main discharge pipes for treated sewage. These changes are part of a statewide effort to expand the areas around these pipes that are closed to shellfishing — called “buffer zones” — to comply with requirements in the National Shellfish Sanitation Program.
These buffer zones are based on computer modeling of how treated sewage flows from treatment plants out of these pipes, and dilutes and disperses into its receiving waters near shellfish beds. They are meant to protect consumers from the risk of getting sick when eating shellfish grown near a wastewater treatment plant, if it fails and dispenses untreated sewage into the water.
Roughly 90,000 acres of Buzzards Bay shellfish beds, stretching from Dartmouth to Mattapoisett, changed from fully approved to conditionally approved as a result of the computer modeling. That means oyster growers using these beds could now be shut down for seven to 21 days after episodes of “rainfall or seasonally poor water quality or other predictable events.”