CHATHAM – The Pleasant Bay Alliance is working to get the towns of Chatham, Orleans, Brewster and Harwich to collaborate on a watershed-wide analysis and management of nitrogen.
The Alliance has made presentations to the selectmen of each town with hopes of adopting nitrogen management resolutions this week at the One Cape conference in Hyannis.
The resolution would combine the efforts of each town’s individual wastewater management plan to try to acquire a watershed permit from the state.
“We wanted to take just the pleasant bay portion of those town plans put them together and see what that whole picture looked like because that really wasn’t happening in any other way,” said Carole Ridley, the coordinator of the Pleasant Bay Alliance.
Ridley said the purpose is to see that all goals are being met for the removal of nitrogen to ensure the health of the system along with finding out if there are areas of over removal.
“Are there cost efficiencies or time efficiencies that could be gained by looking at that whole picture,” she said.
Most of the sub-embayments within the watershed are shared between more than one town. Eleven of the 18 are shared and the remaining seven fall within the boundaries of just one community.
The towns could vote on a resolution Thursday.