Friends of Casco Bay helps to organize a day-long seminar, How Polluted Is Casco Bay, featuring David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, draws 200 attendees.

Joe Payne is hired as Casco Baykeeper of Friends of Casco Bay.

A donated vessel, Donovan’s Delight, becomes the workhorse used for 20 years.

Friends of Casco Bay staff initiates a comprehensive volunteer water quality monitoring program, training 40 Citizen Stewards to monitor surface waters along the Bay.

Friends of Casco Bay launches a pumpout service for recreational boats, siphoning away over 250,000 gallons of sewage to date that might have ended up in the Bay. First Lady Mary Herman christens our pumpout boat Wanda (aka Baykeeper II).

Friends of Casco Bay aids in a coordinated response to the Julie N tanker accident and helps recover a remarkable 78% of the 180,000 gallons of spilled oil (15-20% recovery is considered a success).

Friends of Casco Bay teams up with the Maine Board of Pesticides Control on an anti-pesticides ad campaign: Why Weed’n’Feed isn’t fish food.

Friends of Casco Bay’s data contribute to the State reclassifying waters off Peaks and Little Diamond Islands, and parts of South Portland, including Willard Beach, from class SC to SB, a higher standard for water quality protection.

Friends of Casco Bay joins a research study to monitor juvenile lobsters in the intertidal zone.

Friends of Casco Bay hosts the first BayScaping workshop, From Bethel to the Beach: Protecting Casco Bay Begins in Your Backyard, which draws 200 people and 15 exhibitors. Shortly after, we begin offering neighborhood socials on BayScaping.

Friends of Casco Bay issues a report on Community Strategies to Improve the Bay, to provide tools for town planning for the municipalities bordering the Bay.

Friends of Casco Bay scoops mud from 22 nearshore sites around Casco Bay to measure toxins in the sediments.

Friends of Casco Bay staff members begin sampling for nitrogen pollution.

Friends of Casco Bay grabs sediment samples in Portland Harbor for analysis of levels of toxins such as Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Friends of Casco Bay issues a region-by-region Health Index, an environmental report card on the health of the Bay.

Friends of Casco Bay’s campaign to halt to cruise ship pollution results in Casco Bay being designated the first No Discharge Area in Maine for vessel sewage.

Friends of Casco Bay helps convince the Portland City Council to commit $61 million to construction projects to stem the flow of raw sewage, industrial wastes, and stormwater into Casco Bay, by shortening the timeline to clean up and eliminate dozens of combined sewer overflows.

Friends of Casco Bay’s vigorous campaign against “Green Slime” combats nitrogen pollution on three fronts: stormwater runoff, fertilizers, and sewage treatment plants.

Friends of Casco Bay’s participation in an oil spill clean-up exercise for the Gulf of Maine is immediately followed by advising Waterkeepers involved in the Gulf of Mexico Deep Horizon oil rig disaster.

We create storm drain stenciling kits for community service projects to remind people, “Do not dump. Drains to Casco Bay.”

Friends of Casco Bay’s Executive Director Cathy Ramsdell serves on a citizen’s committee to help the City of Portland craft an equitable stormwater utility fee. It gives concessions to residents and businesses that limit rainwater runoff from impervious roofs, parking lots, and driveways.

Friends of Casco Bay’s experiments on clam spat placed in “clam condos” in acidic mud show evidence of pitting after one week.

Baykeeper Joe Payne is one of 16 commission members who issue a report that calls for more data collection and education to reduce nitrogen pollution, a cause of coastal acidification.

Joe Payne retires after 24 years as Casco Baykeeper. Executive Director Cathy Ramsdell serves as Baykeeper Pro tem until Ivy Frignoca is hired as Casco Baykeeper.

Friends of Casco Bay catalyzes meetings to discuss how to fulfill recommendations of the Ocean Acidification Study Commission report by creating an on-going volunteer partnership of those concerned about ocean and coastal acidification

We release a major report that answers the most commonly asked questions about the Bay, including How healthy is Casco Bay?. A Changing Casco Bay, based on 23 years of data collection, cites nitrogen pollution from fertilizers, rainwater runoff, sewage, and air pollutants, as a leading cause of concern for the health of Casco Bay.

Casco Baykeeper Ivy Frignoca helps organize the first meeting of the newly named Maine Ocean and Coastal Acidification partnership to coordinate policy and research to address this little-known impact of climate change. Later that year, the first Ocean Acidification Symposium draws 110 participants to share data on the causes and effects of ocean and coastal acidification in Maine waters.

Friends of Casco Bay installs a Continuous Monitoring Station to collect water quality data hourly, 365 days a year.

Our advocacy for setting nitrogen limits in sewage treatment plant permits results in the Department of Environmental Protection requiring nitrogen standards in municipalities’ Clean Water Act discharge permits.

Friends of Casco Bay’s Executive Director Cathy Ramsdell serves on a citizen’s task force that leads to the passage of an ordinance to restrict the use of synthetic pesticides on public and private properties.

Friends of Casco Bay’s Executive Director Cathy Ramsdell is recruited to serve on a Working Group to draft an ordinance to regulate fertilizers in the City of South Portland.

Friends of Casco Bay shepherds a bill to create a state-funded Science and Policy Advisory Council on the Impact of Climate Change on Maine’s Marine Species, which is integrated into the Governor’s omnibus bill to address climate change and establish the Maine Climate Council.

Casco Baykeeper Ivy Frignoca is appointed to the Coastal and Marine Working Group of the Maine Climate Council.

Friends of Casco Bay announces our ten-year plan to help our community adapt to and address climate change. We publicly launched the Climate Change and Casco Bay Fund for Technology, Monitoring, and Community Engagement, to raise $1.5 million to be used over the next decade to understand how Casco Bay is being affected by climate change.

The Maine Climate Council publishes the Maine Won’t Wait Climate Action Plan, providing a roadmap for the state’s sustainable future. Casco Baykeeper Ivy Frignoca serves on the Climate Council’s Coastal and Marine Working Group, helping to draft the plan’s policy recommendations.

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.

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.

We celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act, a foundational environmental law that lies at the core of our advocacy to improve and protect the health of Casco Bay.

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.  

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.