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June/July 2009 e-newsletter of the Long Island Sound Study (LISS) LISS News l Around the Sound l Water Web Links LISS News: EPA Review of LISS Program A Performance Evaluation Team from the EPA visited Long Island Sound from June 1 to June 3 to review the Long Island Sound Study program. LISS is one of 28 National Estuary Programs that receives a triennial review from the EPA. Staff from EPA’s Office of Water in Washington D.C. and the New England Region headquarters of the EPA heard presentations from LISS’s partner agencies and CAC co-chairs Nancy Seligson and Curt Johnson about LISS-funded programs involving water quality, habitat restoration, research, citizen involvement, and social marketing. They also went on tours of sites that show management efforts to restore and protect the Sound, including the Stamford sewage treatment plant, which recently went through a $100 million upgrade, a fishway project along the Mianus River in Greenwich, and a tidal flow improvement project at Sunken Meadow State Park in Kings Park, Long Island. Brian Eltz, Conservation Assistant with the Town of Greenwich, discusses the Mianus River Fishway project, with Mark Tedesco, Long Island Sound Study director, and members of the EPA's Performance Evaluation Team Obama Administration Proposes $3 M for LISS funding The Obama administration in May proposed keeping the FY2010 budget for LISS at the same $3 million level funded in 2009. This is the highest level of funding in a budget proposed by EPA in the history of the partnership. LISS also is expecting to receive $600,000 in funding as part of the National Estuary Program, the same it received in 2009. In April, the LISS Management Committee approved the $3.6 million budget for FY2009, which begins Oct. 1. The money will be used for projects that include a Sound-wide water quality monitoring program, restoring habitats, a K-12 Teachers Mentor program, a research grant program, and the Long Island Sound Futures Fund, which distributes grants to dozens of environmental groups working on restoring and protecting the Sound. EPA Selects Two LISS Proposals for Climate Ready Funding In May, The Town of Groton and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (CT DEP), through the ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, as well as LISS, received financial and technical assistance awards from the EPA’s Climate Ready Estuary Program. ICLEI will receive a $30,000 grant to help the Town of Groton and CT DEP hold three workshops that will train and educate federal, state, and municipal governmental officials to explore their roles in climate change adaptation efforts and define strategies for maximizing the benefits of their engagement. EPA will also provide LISS with technical assistance to help in the development of a bi-state Long Island Sound strategy to quantify, via sentinel monitoring, the effects of climate change on Long Island Sound, as well as to assess the Sound’s vulnerability to climate change impacts. The Climate Ready Estuaries Program  was started in 2008 to respond to the water-related impacts of climate change. Update’s Let’s Go Fishing Newsletter Now Available The latest issue of Update, LISS’s print newsletter, is now available. The issue highlights the latest information about the efforts to protect the Sound’s fishery, and what the states are doing to encourage recreational fishing. The newsletter can also be viewed on-line at www.longislandsoundstudy.net. Around the Sound Monitoring on North Shore of Long Island The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)—New York Water Science Center recently installed their fourth tidal wetland monitoring station on the north shore of Long Island. At the end of May, sampling began at West Pond in Glen Cove. At this site and three others, data on water elevation, temperature, specific conductance, salinity, sampling depth, are collected every six minutes and are immediately downloaded to an on-line public database via satellite telemetry. The USGS North Shore Tidal Wetland Monitoring program is part of a larger, on-going effort between NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), USGS, and the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University to determine the causes of tidal wetland loss on the north shore of Long Island. Most of the analyzed wetlands across the north shore have experienced a loss of more than 20 percent in vegetated acreage between 1974 and 2006 based on aerial infra-red photography. This study will compare data from wetlands experiencing varying degrees of loss as well as those experiencing no change. Once the cause of wetland loss is better understood, management decisions can more effectively be made. To keep the project viable through 2010, LISS will award NYSDEC a $75,000 grant. In future years, this project is expected to be carried on using state funds. The other three USGS north shore monitoring sites, which began collecting data in December 2007, are East Creek in Sands Point, Frost Creek in Lattingtown, and Flax Pond in Old Field. These three sites also measure dissolved oxygen, pH, and turbidity. Click on water data to view on-line databases for all four sites. West Pond station photo by Richard A. Cartwright New Yorkers Help Monitor Horseshoe Crab Populations In May, over 75 volunteers crowded on a beach in Mount Sinai Harbor, NY to help Jennifer Mattei, a professor from Sacred Heart University, tag horseshoe crabs. This training was part of Project Limulus, a program to increase understanding of horseshoe crab abundance and movement in Long Island Sound. After the training session, each volunteer received a tagging kit that included 25 tags issued by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as part of a coastwide effort to track horseshoe crab populations along the Atlantic coast. For more information on this program, please visit Project Limulus or contact Larissa Graham at 631-632-9216 or LJG85@cornell.edu. Fish Cam Installed in Mianus River The Mianus River Watershed Council and Town of Greenwich have recently installed an underwater camera at the Mianus Pond Dam to improve the accuracy of counting fish that pass through the Mianus Pond Fishway. The fishway, built in 1993, has allowed thousands of anadromous fish such as alewives and blueback herring, collectively referred to as river herring, to swim upstream to spawn in freshwater habitats as well as allow catadromous fish such as eels to swim downstream and out to the ocean to spawn. The Town already had an electronic fish counter installed at the dam,but the camera will help identify the species passing through the fishway. The Watershed Council and Town also plan to host a Web cam link. The fish camera was funded through a Long Island Sound Study Futures Fund small grant. alewives seen through underwater fish camera Water Web Links Water Quality Monitoring Summer is when western Long Island Sound is most likely to experience hypoxic conditions—low levels of dissolved oxygen. CTDEP operates a water quality monitoring program that tests for dissolved oxygen levels in stations throughout the Sound. Summer results will begin to be posted on CT DEP’s dissolved oxygen Web page by July. EPA's New Stormwater Road-Related MS4s Web Site The EPA's NPDES Stormwater Program recently posted seven new Web pages focusing on stormwater running off of roadway systems for Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4s). This new Web area is geared toward state, county, and local transportation authorities that deal with stormwater issues. These pages include information on specific materials and practices that control stormwater, technical case studies, links to NPDES stormwater transportation permits and Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) stormwater programs, and news and events on things such as new funding opportunities and stormwater issues. Visit this new site at: www.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater/roads. NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab NOAA’s Environmental Visualization Lab has gone live at www.nnvl.noaa.gov. On this site you'll find a wealth of marine-oriented content created at the Lab, including a video file showing how the “dead zone” forms in the Gulf of Mexico and how ocean acidification impacts coral reefs. Imagery and animations are updated on a daily basis. Back to top Please note: This email message is being sent to subscribers of the Long Island Sound Study E-Newsletter. PLEASE DO NOT REPORT THIS MESSAGE AS SPAM. Unsubscribe or update your subscription at  http://www.longislandsoundstudy.net/cgi-bin/list.htm

Long Island Sound Study   EPA Long Island Sound Office 888 Washington Boulevard  Stamford, CT 06904-2152 Phone: (203) 977-1541  Fax: (203) 977-1546