b'C H A P T E R F O U Rannual meeting on August 12, 2002, as an information vehicle for disseminating basic facts from Board of Health Chairman Jean Young about the growing threat of nitrogen loading in Chatham waterways; 115 people attended, and the presentation and question-and-answer period made page 1 in The Chronicle. Under a different heading but also consistent with the declared purpose, in September 2002, a team of 140 FCW-recruited Chatham Water Watchers finishedrr-w* rw FREEPublic Seminar the fourth year of water testing at 25WENDS of CHATHAM WATERWAYS on the Environmentstations. Registered on technical instruments, their findings wereALIENIN VASIO N !funneled to Dr. Robert Duncanson,How Non-Native Plants are director of the Towns Water QualityThreatening Chathams BiodiversityLaboratory, to help build a research Monday, June 10, 2002 data base for the ongoing Waste Water7:30 PM Eldredge Public LibraryManagement Study. Main Street, ChathamFrom early in the organizationsA panel of conservation experts will discuss:life, that declaration of purpose set ahow to identify harmful invasive speciesalternative plants for home gardens and landscapingcompass course for the directors ashow to remove/control/manage invasives without harming native plants or our fragile ecosystemthey voiced concerns, undertookrules and regulations which impact the control of invasive plants in Chathamstudies and proposed solutions. GoingPANEL:Kristin Andres, Chatham Conservation Agentinto their November 83 board meet Chris Mattrick, New England Wildflower Society Seth Wilkinson, MA Invasive Plant Evaluation Subcommitteeing, members were worried about peoples uses of Stage Harbor forAll are welcome!fishing, shellfishing, moorings, and commercial activities. The basicEver since its earliest months, the Friends question: how long can (those uses)has met its own challenge to bring critical continue to increase without seriouslyinformation to townspeople.This flyer hurting our waters? Answers wereadvertised a 2002 presentation on the threat of often-voracious alien plants.needed soon. Then, pollution had to be dealt with somehow. If its sources could be pinpointed, what could the board do about them? Based on the signs of pollution, a call for property mapping was voiced as Step Number One toward coming up with a solution.One of the first trustees, Yale graduate and architect Theodore (Sam) Streibert, agreed to do that job. They were discovering coliform content in various waterways, he recalls, and we wanted to know what was contiguous in terms of property and where people lived. Using assessors maps, he developed a matrix of properties for Stage Harbor and Oyster Pond. It became a focus for discussion (and) part of problem-solving.50'