b'C H A P T E R N I N Eother missions. So, to do the job right, more people than just his staff would be needed to cover the field systematically.Even so, the CHMP obligated the community to get on with it. In 1996, the FCW board, concurring that steps had to be taken, gave its okay for Martha Stone to call Dr. Brian L. Howes, senior fellow at CMAST, the Center for Marine Science and Technology at U-Mass Dartmouth (the Centers now a School). Would he advise on how to launch a water-monitoring project? It would have to be sponsored by the Town, he explained, but a far bigger problem had to do with lining up volunteers to do the field testing. That was easy fishing for FCW Mrs. Stone assured him that the Friends would willingly recruit, train and supply any and all volunteers to collect samples and even deliver the containers to CMAST in Dartmouth.Spurred by this exchange, FCWs board encouraged Martha Stone to contact Dr. Duncanson to ask about formating the monitoring program. He was planning to do it, he told her, but then came a familiar caveat: how could they possibly assemble enough volunteers to handle the duties? Still, he was prepared to work on the idea. Again, Mrs. Stone emphasized that FCW would put together the volunteer force. In spite of that assurance, the project stayed in neutral for the balance of that year. During 1997, the matter was raised once more with the lab director, who echoed his intent to get the sampling moving. By now, the RPMs of high-octane FCW directors were climbing.In the warmth of early summer 98, FCW decided that another step was in order. With Mrs. Stone as spearhead, calls went to Dr. Howes and Town Manager Tom Groux to sit down with a nucleus of Friends directors to revisit the CHMPs requisite monitoring project; in his stead, Groux sent Bob Duncanson. Dr. Howes was the right resource person for that moment. He explained how monitoring programs worked in other towns and why collecting the data was so vital in managing salt-water embayments. That stimulus was undeniable, and Duncanson followed up by saying hed proceed with getting the testing gear.Everyone had hoped that sampling could begin before the summer of 98 had headed south. And for its part, FCW made a valiant try. At the August annual meeting, a call went out for more volunteers; Mrs. Stone and George Olmsted had signed up eighteen, but wanted twenty, to start. By early September, Dr. Duncanson had pinned down seven testing stations in the Stage Harbor complex and had ordered the measuring devices. Late that month, he and Dr. Howes set about training FCWs volunteers. That field force tried its new skills for the first time in October; the seven teams made up of twenty women and161'