Orleans is Moving Ahead On Wastewater
This past Tuesday, voters in Orleans approved the wastewater funding by a two to one majority. By all accounts, Orleans is committed to ramp up its efforts and finally take action to address our wastewater challenges.
On Wednesday, it was clear the town had already begun to act. The Orleans Water Quality Advisory Panel heard from Mike Domenica and AECOM about their goals and plans for the next seven months. Our engineering teams are continuing with the financial projections, completing a 25% design for a new treatment plant, extending our aquaculture demonstration projects in Lonnie’s Pond and other areas, preparing to launch a permeable reactive barrier at Eldredge Park and another at the landfill, and, finally preparing to launch our initial effort to address our freshwater ponds.
The team recognizes that spring town meeting will be here sooner than we think and has already identified clear objectives for the spring. Now that funding has been approved and work has begun, a top priority is to develop an overall plan for the next seven months so that we all have clear expectations about what we’ll know when. If you’d like more details about all this material we encourage you to read the Program Status Update presented at the meeting or, for those true stalwarts, view the entire meeting on the town’s web site.
At OPC, we’re delighted with this burst of activity and we will continue to report progress to our members throughout the year. OPC actively participates in these efforts and would welcome feedback and questions from our members. Please contact me directly if you have any topics you would like OPC to raise with the teams working on the town’s behalf.
Join the Brewster Ponds Coalition at Bakers Pond
The Brewster Ponds Coalition has generously invited members of OPC to join them next Saturday on an educational walk at Bakers Pond, our shared beautiful pond. The walk will take place next Saturday, November 19th from 10 am to noon.
Reservations are required and spots are quickly filling up. For additional information and to sign up, please visit the Brewster Ponds Coalition website at http://www.brewsterponds.org/newsevents.
A Chance to Show Off Your Pictures of the Cape
In recent Decembers, the Cape Codder has devoted a full page to photographs submitted by readers that highlight the natural beauty of our area. This year’s photo gallery, which will appear in the issue of Friday, December 30, will again focus on our waters.
Send entrees (more than one if you wish) by December 10, 2016 to photos2016@orleanspondcoalition.org as an attachment to an e-mail. Photos must be at least 170 dots per square inch (dpi). Each photograph (black-and-white or color) should be accompanied by a caption not to exceed 35 words in length. Photographs may be from any season of the year. While they may highlight the beauty of a given locale, photos of water bodies in distress are also welcome.
Wanted!Volunteers
Come join the fun! OPC has a lot going on and we’re reaching out to our members asking for you to help. There’s plenty to do, for whatever interests you.
Right now, we’re particularly interested in having someone help us maintain our brand new web site. If you enjoy working with computers and are looking for a chance to work with some of the newest technology available, we’d love your help.
We’re also beginning to plan for next year’s Celebrate Our Waters. We’re delighted with the rave reviews from our festival and look forward to making it even more popular next year. Over the next month, we’ll look back at this past year and begin to plan for next year.
We’ve just updated our web site to make it easy for you to let us know you’re interested in helping our efforts. If you fill in your information at Volunteer With OPC someone will quickly get back to you.
Our New Calendar
It seems that even off-season, Orleans is a busy place. As we hear about all the local events planned and the whirlwind of activity as we ramp up the town’s wastewater efforts, we’ve added a local Calendar to our web site to help us all keep track of what’s going on.
Please let us know if you have events which would interest OPC’s members. We’ll quickly add them to the web site and let you know when they’re up there for you to review and confirm.