Reopening of clam flats delayed
Plans to reopen clam flats closed for 20 years in the mouth of the Merrimack River were rained out this week, but state shellfish officials said that, weather permitting, they will be opening next week instead.
All it took was a quarter-inch of rain Monday to delay the much-anticipated reopening of the mudflats slated for tomorrow. The rain brings coliform bacteria, which has kept the area off limits.
It's hoped that when the weather dries up, the level of bacteria in the river will go down, said Jeff Kennedy, a senior biologist with the state's Division of Marine Fisheries.
''The rain has set us back at least until next week," he said.
The Merrimack mud flats were once one of the state's most productive clamming areas, the state agency said in a press release Monday.
Efforts to clean up sewage treatment plants that discharge into the river have helped remove much of the bacteria, and the state started taking a hard look at reopening the clam flats three years ago.
After state monitoring for the past three years, the Merrimack mud flats were deemed clean enough to reopen on a conditional basis this spring.
When the flats do open, only professional diggers will be allowed to harvest, and any time it rains more than a quarter of an inch near the mouth of the river, they will be subject to closure for at least five days, Kennedy said. Even rains as far upstream as Lawrence can force the closure of the clam beds here, he said.
The affected areas include hundreds of acres that run north from Pine Island Creek in Newbury along the Plum Island River and across the Merrimack River to Salisbury.
Professional diggers in Salisbury, which has a shellfish management plan, will need town and state shellfish licenses. In Newburyport, which has no such plan, just the state license is needed.
So far no licenses have been sold in Salisbury, according to the town clerk's office, but Kennedy said interest has been high and the state is getting plenty of calls.
Any clams taken from the river will need to be cleaned at the state's processing plant on Plum Island, which runs clean salt water over them to remove any remaining bacteria. The plant processes some 15,000 bushels of clams, most from flats in Boston Harbor.
The Merrimack River flats were first closed in 1925 and reopened a few years later when the Plum Island plant was built. The flats were closed again in the early 1980s and have remained closed ever since. There are several sewage treatment plants that discharge waste water treated for bacteria upstream of the flats. State officials believe rain carrying road runoff into street drains is also a source of bacteria.
