b'C H A P T E R N I N Emoney outlays, the cleat legitimacy of the annual research over a span of five years, the feeling of community that mellows for those women and men shipping out every two weeks: it is a win-win situation for all hands. As far as Town government goes, theres no question about the impact of these volunteers and many others. In this case, Chatham Water Watchers has written one of the brightest success stories in the life of FCWand, as Martha Stone points out from her long involvement with FCW, its layer # 4. In other words, #1 was instituting septic inspections in 1985; # 2, the call for a pump-out facility in the Stage Harbor Management Plan; and # 3, that same plans requirement that No Discharge Zones be shown on charts to benefit visiting boaters. Mrs. Stone advises that C. W. Ws testing might have just been for coliform bacteria, had it not been for levels 13, which shaped the Water Watchers obligation to test mainly for nitrogen.It would disavow reality to say that FCWs putting together a team of Water Watchers happened uneventfully. Now entering its fifth season, this water- testing project eases along smoothly, but at genesis in the mid-Nineties, rocks in the stream tended to interfere with the flow. Once again, a volunteer venture came up against the age-old antipathies that too often go hand in hand in town- and-gown relationships.Chathams ample experience with this fact of municipal life calls for a little background, reaching back to about 1986. Up to then, the town had been governed by a three-man board of full-time selectmen; they doubled as assessors. But ever since World War II, growing pains stretched that arrangement more and more. Responding, a Government Advisory Committee urged that the three full- timers be replaced by five part-time selectmen. Town Meeting in May 86 concurred. A sequel was naming the towns first executive secretary, the late Jim Lindstrom. His office, in turn, was upgraded in 1994, calling for greater experience; a town administrator, Tom Groux, took over, and became town manager -Chathams first -in 1995. This was the fall-out of ceaseless growth.5That irrepressible process brought expansions in government below the top rung. In another 1986 change triggered by thickening complexities of management, Margo Fenn, now executive director of the Cape Cod Commission, came on the scene as the Towns first professional planner. The next year, with pollution threatening the long-admired splendor of this resort communitys waterways, a professional was hired as director of town laboratories. He was Dr. Robert A. Duncanson, now director of Health & Environment.Even before his arrival, Town officials had had to face the matter of dirty water. That recognition goes back at least to 1965, when overflow from a cesspool under a downtown restaurant wound up in Oyster Pond. That made159'