Friends of Casco Bay hires Will Everitt as our next Executive Director. Will is a familiar face, having served as our Communications and Development Director for 15 years.

We complete our 30th year of collecting seasonal water quality data from Casco Bay. We also pass the one-year mark of having three Continuous Monitoring Stations in the Bay.

Friends of Casco Bay collects water quality data from the Presumpscot River to support our advocacy to improve its health. Using a data sonde, data is collected every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. The Presumpscot is the largest river that flows into Casco Bay.

165 volunteers join Friends of Casco Bay to collect 178 water samples from Portland Harbor. The samples will be analyzed for total nitrogen and support our advocacy to reduce nitrogen pollution. These data will build on the dataset from our first Nab, held in 2016.

After many years of advocacy from Friends of Casco Bay, new protections that will reduce stormwater pollution in Maine’s most populated areas go into effect in July. These protections come under Maine’s MS4 permit.  

 

Cathy Ramsdell retires after serving as Executive Director of Friends of Casco Bay for more than 18 years. Throughout her tenure, Cathy was widely credited with securing Friends of Casco Bay’s programmatic and financial foundation, relying on her career experience in accounting, marine ecology, and non-profit organizational development.

Following plant upgrades and improved techniques at Portland’s East End Wastewater Treatment Facility in 2017, the facility reduced the amount of nitrogen in its effluent by 1.5 million pounds over four years. These changes came out of collaborative discussions between the Portland Water District and Friends of Casco Bay.

Friends of Casco Bay helps to pass a bill that mandates critical updates to coastal land use and planning laws. These updates account for the projected impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels, more intense storms, and increased precipitation. 

 

We launch two new Continuous Monitoring Stations in Casco Bay. The new stations are located in Portland Harbor and off Harpswell. They join our original station first launched in 2016 off the coast of Yarmouth.

Friends of Casco Bay successfully raises $1.5 million to launch two additional Continuous Monitoring Stations in the Bay, maintain all three stations for a decade, and communicate changing conditions to our community.