Wainscott Pond Is Target

Following through on its agreement last month to allow expanded research in Wainscott Pond, with the goal of developing remedies for its degraded water quality, the East Hampton Town Trustees heard an overview on Monday night of the protocol that will assess the water body.

Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, who has conducted water-quality research for the trustees for the last four years and more recently for a group of property owners on Georgica Pond in East Hampton, told the trustees that “this study is to come up with a comprehensive assessment about the watershed, the ecosystem, and the flow of water and nutrients into the water body.” That, he said, would allow development of a remediation plan.

A study of Wainscott Pond would follow the trajectory of his research at Georgica, which was started for the trustees but significantly expanded thanks to funding from the property owners’ group, the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation. That study has produced a large body of data, he said. “I see Wainscott Pond working in the exact same way.”

Property owners around Wainscott Pond have similarly banded together, raising $179,000 to fund the expanded research that Dr. Gobler said was essential to combating the harmful algal blooms that have afflicted both ponds, as well as Fort Pond in Montauk and other water bodies across Long Island. That figure will fund a full calendar year of research, he said.

To date, little is known about Wainscott Pond’s watershed or ecosystem. “Until we have data and information, what we might do could solve all of the problem, or none of the problem,” Dr. Gobler said. “We need more information to move forward.” 

A telemetry buoy has been placed at the pond’s center to continuously collect and transmit data such as temperature, pH, and levels of chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen, and blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria. That data can be seen at somas.stonybrook.edu/gobler.

Dr. Gobler further proposed the collection of water samples from the shoreline and via a non-mechanized vessel from multiple locations in the pond to quantify nitrogen, phosphorous, algae, fecal coliform bacteria, and enterococcus levels. Sediment samples will be taken to measure organic matter, nitrogen, and phosphorous content. The bottomlands’ composition — sand versus mud, for example — will be assessed. This, he said, “has a lot of implications for movement of water, but also cycling of nutrients.”