After 50 years, DEM reopens Portsmouth shellfishing grounds

In poetic punctuation to end Rhode Island’s 10th annual Quahog Week, the state is reopening a section of Narragansett Bay along the Portsmouth shoreline for the first time in half a century.

Saturday will be the first time the 462-acre area south of the Mount Hope Bridge has been open to shellfishing since 1975, according to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM). The reopening reflects longstanding state efforts across multiple agencies to improve wastewater treatment operations and stormwater management, in turn improving water quality and making it safe to harvest and sell clams, oysters and other shellfish. 

“We’re very excited to be able to open a new area in Narragansett Bay to shellfishing,” DEM Director Terry Gray said in a statement. “DEM will keep on working with our partners to protect our waters and continue investments and improvements in Narragansett Bay, which is so central to the quality of life for all Rhode Islanders.”

The opening falls on the final day of the state’s annual Quahog Week, which showcases the harvesters, markets and businesses behind the state’s $315.6 million seafood industry, per a 2024 state report. Saturday also concludes shellfishing season in several other areas of the state, which close each year during the summer in order to avoid water quality impacts associated with nearby marinas and moorings. 

A $200 million, multi-decade overhaul of Fall River’s Wastewater Treatment Facility was the primary driver behind water quality improvements in this area, said David Borkman, DEM’s shellfish waste equality program supervisor. Much like a similar effort undertaken in Providence by the Narragansett Bay Commission, the city of Fall River, Massachusetts, invested in a series of underground tunnels to capture and contain stormwater runoff during heavy rainfalls, preventing the pollutants from overwhelming the wastewater plant and leaking into the bay.

“With the improved facilities, that has stopped happening,” Borkman said in an interview Friday.

DEM, in conjunction with state health and coastal regulators, routinely samples water quality for bacteria and viruses. Once quality improves enough, they also test shellfish samples.

The soon-to-be reopened shellfishing area in Portsmouth met federal standards for safe harvesting nearly a year ago, Borkman said. But DEM traditionally waits until Memorial Day weekend to announce changes to designated shellfishing grounds.

“On the one hand, you want to get the message out and make that positive change, but if you make too many announcements about shellfishing areas being open and closed, it can overwhelm the public,” Borkman said.

He viewed a conservative pace as beneficial given the public health implications.

Bruce Eastman, secretary and treasurer for the Rhode Island Shellfisherman’s Association, welcomed the new area, despite the slow pace of progress.

“It’s a big plus to get something back like that,” he said in an interview Friday.

 A 2021 reopening of a 1,900-acre area in the Providence River thanks to a similar wastewater investment has proven fruitful for harvesters. Now it’s the most heavily shellfished area in the state.

“I don’t know whether this new area will be as abundant, most likely not, but the industry will scope it out for themselves,” Borkman said.

Protecting fertile ground 

Shellfishing grounds in the Providence River were temporarily closed for 10 days earlier this month from a sewage spill caused by a ruptured pipe in the East Providence Wastewater Treatment Facility. The area reopened on May 18, but has not quelled frustrations among harvesters with the broader problem of sewage spills harming their livelihoods and the state’s natural resources.

“As shellfishermen we have been dealing with these spills for many years,” Bruce Eastman, secretary and treasurer for the Rhode Island Shellfisherman’s Association, wrote in an email to Rhode Island Current. He remains concerned about the “precarious” position of the East Providence sewage plant pipe along the East Bay Bike Path in Watchemoket Cove. 

A separate state program aims to minimize the impact of sewage spills on the shellfishing industry by letting regulators transfer quahogs from areas where harvesting is not allowed to places where they can be harvested. Yet funding for the program has proven unreliable, with a “dismal” transplant in 2025 due to low funding, Eastman said.

Legislation introduced in February by Rep. Joe Solomon Jr., a Warwick Democrat, and backed by the Rhode Island Shellfisherman’s Association, proposes a fee on wastewater treatment plants of 1 cent per every 10,000 gallons of sewage discharge. The proposal was born out of a 2023 legislative panel charged with reviewing the declining quahog population in Narragansett Bay. It would generate $63,752 a year based on the 11 wastewater plants permitted through DEM, according to analysis by the Shellfisherman’s Association included in its written testimony to lawmakers.

“That would give us a good, predictable source of funding,” Eastman said in an interview Friday.

The fee could affect sewage rates for local residents and businesses, but would be at most a few cent increase,  which Solomon dubbed “negligible.”

“The fee is really minimal and the benefits are important,” Solomon, who is now running for attorney general, said in an interview Friday.

No one wrote in opposition to the bill during its March 31 hearing before the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. 

The bill was held for further study, the standard procedure for preliminary review of legislation.