We Need Your Help
We have had a good year. In 2022 Accabonac Protection Committee (APC) continued our focus on protecting and enhancing the water quality of the harbor we all love and cherish by giving financial support to important environmental projects that discover sources of pollutants and excess nitrogen entering Accabonac Harbor. Your donations are crucial to help fund these projects in 2023.
Accabonac Harbor is our refuge; it is where we go to walk, to meditate, swim, paddle, to fish and rake for clams and oysters. It’s vital for all of us nearby residents to do what we can to help keep the harbor water clean and to preserve the beauty that surrounds it.
In 2022 APC funded water quality projects conducted by hydrogeologists and environmental scientists of Cornell Cooperative Extension with the goal to develop ways to mitigate excess nitrogen entering the harbor. We also provided financial support to the East Hampton Shellfish Hatchery’s sugar kelp pilot program in the harbor which aims to sequester nitrogen by growing sugar kelp through the winter and harvesting in the spring. Lessons learned from the 2022 crop will be applied to the continuation of this effort in 2023.
In addition, APC funds and organizes educational forums ranging from water quality issues, to whales, turtles, sharks and even birding from your beach chair. We held our first in person annual members meeting since 2019. It was great to see so many friends of the Creek and get to socialize with our scientific collaborators.
APC advised the town government, based on input from APC members, regarding projects to protect Accabonac’s shoreline, such as restoration and protection of dunes and vegetation on Louse Point and Gerard Drive. All these initiatives will help sustain the health of Accabonac Harbor as new residents build and live within its fragile watershed.
Still more needs to be done. The potential for harmful algal blooms remains. Almost half the harbor is permanently or seasonally closed to shell fishing. Locating groundwater and stormwater sources of excess nitrogen and other contaminants with a target for mitigation is our focus. In order to track down groundwater and stormwater sources of pollution and reduce excessive nitrogen in at-risk areas of the harbor, we need your help to continue projects in 2023.
APC is a grass roots organization. We have no paid staff. If you would like to be part of the solution, please make an end of the year donation to the Accabonac Protection Committee. This kind of environmental action is as local as it gets.
Thank you for reading this and caring about the Harbor.
Patrice Dalton, President
Accabonac Protection Committee
