DES, Cities Strike Great Bay Agreement

The state and the cities of Portsmouth, Dover and Rochester have reached an agreement in the Great Bay nitrogen case and agreed to dismiss arguments originally set to be heard by the state Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The two sides were working on a resolution over the past month.

The agreement is that DES will take a better look at the science that goes into the nitrogen levels of Great Bay, said Michael Joyal, Dover's city manager.

The dispute centers on how best to improve water quality and habitat-important eel grass in the bay.

Officials from the three cities have expressed a commitment to reduce nitrogen discharges, and to work with the state to do so, but they had questioned the regulators' response on nitrogen-discharge standards.

The communities balked at being asked to pay for the most-modern and expensive technology without first having what they call complete science.

The cities pointed to a peer review of a 2009 report that interpreted nitrogen water quality criteria for Great Bay, and which DES used to propose  a strict nitrogen standard to protect the estuary. The peer review concluded the 2009 report was "unscientifically sound," in part, because it did not consider other factors that may affect growth of eel grass, according to the Great Bay coalition of communities.

"We don't want to end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars," Joyal said, "only to find out it's not doing what we thought it would do to Great Bay."