EDITORIAL: Recognize Our Impact on the Sound

By The Stamford Advocate, Conn.

May 4–Start with just the sheer beauty. The great expanse shining bright blue under a clear noon sky, or reflecting the bittersweet rays of a setting sun. Or the smell of salt air that can reach inland if conditions are right, interrupting a busy day to remind us to appreciate the special place where we live.

It’s where we go with our families on hot summer days; and it’s where some families have gone for generation after generation to work the waters and earn their keep.

Long Island Sound is so intertwined with our lives and history that it is near impossible to imagine our communities without it. Indeed, some of them might not be here if it were not.

But even though it’s clear what we take from the Sound, most of us rarely question what we give back. That might be because the answer isn’t always pleasant; or it’s because we don’t even consider the concept of “repaying” the Sound at all.

A recent survey shows that most people who live near Long Island Sound do not know what a watershed is — even though they inhabit one — and have no appreciation of how their behavior affects Sound waters.

That has to change if we are to become better guardians of what is our most precious natural resource.

The Stony Brook University Center for Survey Research and the federal Environmental Protection Agency have polled people living within 15 miles of the Sound from New London to the Bronx, N.Y. The results are a bit staggering.

For example, more than three-quarters of those living in Connecticut watersheds say they do not do anything to harm the Sound, and nearly two-thirds believe they are powerless to improve it.

Showing a flair for understatement, Mark Tedesco, director of the EPA’s Long Island Sound Office, said there is a “disconnect” between what people know and what is actually true.

“That reveals a lot about humanity,” Mr. Tedesco told Staff Writer Tim Stelloh. “We always think that problems are with other people.”

Right he is. The problems with the Sound are not other people’s. They’re ours.

Consider this: Most respondents said they strongly support protecting the environment — 76 percent even said a healthy environment is more important than economic growth. Yet 30 percent said they fertilize their lawns several times a year, and 37 percent said they wash their cars at home. Talk about a disconnect!

Perhaps the confusion is caused by the belief that “other” factors — industry, boats, sewage — cause most of the pollution. Two-thirds of respondents said they believe those elements were the chief culprits in the Sound’s problems. But only 18 percent cited runoff.

The truth is that runoff — fertilizer, detergents, motor oil and many other things we use that rain washes “away” — is a major contributor to the Sound’s troubles.

Fertilizer, for example, doesn’t just help our lawns grow. When rain flushes it down storm drains, it makes its way into the Sound and spurs the growth of algae, which causes the low-oxygen condition called hypoxia. No oxygen, and creatures vital to the Sound’s life suffocate.

It doesn’t take a lot to reduce our impact on water quality. For example, lawns don’t need to be fed as often as we think they do. And there are organic fertilizers available. Better yet, use compost — store-bought or your own — or use a mulching lawn mower. Wash lawn equipment on the lawn, not the driveway, and don’t spread fertilizer on sidewalks and driveways.

Hope is not lost. Participants in the survey got one part very right: Some 73 percent said water quality in the Sound would improve if “most” residents changed behavior.

What each of us has to do is realize that “most” includes us.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Stamford Advocate, Conn.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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