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Guest Editorial for Cape Codder, 3/18/98
Re-opening Wellfleet's Herring River
There are good reasons why the diking and drainage of Herring River earlier in this century has continued to generate local controversy. Most fishermen, conservationists and ecologists who have assessed the situation from an environmental perspective over the past 30 years agree that the blocking of seawater flow diminished the native ecosystem. Research since the 1970's has revealed serious water quality problems resulting from the diking; poor water quality regularly kills fish and increases biting mosquitoes. Fortunately, the recent volunteer effort to remove fallen trees from the stream has re-focused attention on the river, and re-kindled debate. Disagreement over future management of the river will be resolved when those interested and responsible consider the past, i.e. the ecological and social importance ofthe open, undiked estuary.
The Herring River of north Wellfleet and south Truro is large by Cape Cod standards. The stream begins at Herring Pond, gathers volume from discharging groundwater and several tributaries, and finally flows into Cape Cod Bay at Wellfleet Harbor. For about 2000 years prior to European settlement, the stream's 1000-acre flood plain comprised a highly productive salt marsh estuary (see accompanying photograph), similar in appearance to the lower Pamet River. Like all salt marshes, the river's marshlands provided food and nursery habitat for many commercially important fish, shellfish and crustaceans, protected coastal waters from pollution, provided salt hay for animal fodder, and buffered the effects of storm surges on coastal farms and dwellings - all for free. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the wetland system's marshlands, and particularly the herring run, were of central importance to Wellfleet.
Since 1908, human activities, primarily diking and drainage, have radically changed the way the ecosystem operates. Most of these changes (e.g. wetland loss, water quality degradation) have gradually destroyed many of the marshland's native values to people. Today, after nine decades of diking, ditch drainage, stream channelization and the encroachment of forest into a once-expansive estuary, the "Herring River" as it once existed is nearly invisible to the public. Its central importance to the Town of Wellfleet, recorded in every Town Meeting Report before the 1908 diking, has been largely forgotten. The fact that unrestricted tidal flow extended north beyond the Truro line, east beyond the present Route 6,and thence south to nearly Wellfleet Center has become vaguely recalled oral tradition. Nevertheless, the controversial nature of the 1908 diking and subsequent drainage of Herring River's wetlands has never been totally forgotten. It's clear that the river's management will only be settled when we share a broader understanding of what we all have inherited from both natural processes and human influences.
In this regard, meetings last fall and winter to discuss, in particular, the stream's management for herring passage have been informative and encouraging. In late winter these meetings led to the stream clearing to ease fish and canoe passage. Those of us who helped with the work saw the project as a hopeful first step in recovering some of the many benefits sacrificed by historic diking and drainage. However, this work is only the first step. Although sentiment is clearly for "improving" conditions in the river, the devil is in the details, and in differing perspectives: What is Herring River?
The river is still an estuary, much more than a channel for herring passage to their spawning ponds. It's time to treat the river as a whole system. Past attempts to "fix" one aspect (e.g. to control mosquitoes or to ease herring passage) have led to many unanticipated disturbances to a native ecosystem that, in its unaltered condition, furnished local people with food, fodder, recreation and beauty. Mosquitoes, an occasionally serious nuisance both before and after diking, are now considered more manageable with unrestricted tidal flow.
"Re-opening the river" includes more than removing fallen trees. The river's systemic and long-term problems cannot be solved without restoring at least partial tidal flow, reversing the well-intentioned actions of the 1907 "Dike Committee" who, in their 19th century spirit of human progress and control, chose to cut off a defining element of the estuary. Working together, the Town, the Seashore, State agencies and others can continue to piece together a restoration process that minimizes disturbance to abutters while recovering lost ecosystem values.
Understanding depends on perspective. In the context of a two-thousand-year-old coastal system, we humans look through a narrow window of time - our relatively short life spans. True restoration of the diked Herring River will take the vision and courage to see beyond this small window to the system's past and future as a productive estuarine salt marsh.
John Portnoy
