Executive Summary
The 2015 Maine and New Hampshire Coastal Resident Survey investigated the benefits associated with coastal water quality and focused on capturing the economic and social values of this natural resource. We captured coastal residents’ perceptions about water quality including benefits of water that is clear of pollution and free from contaminants, what factors detract from coastal water quality, and beliefs about who should be responsible for managing this resource.
Key findings from this survey are highlighted below. Click on each of the themes to learn more. (Clicking on the link again will compress the text).
67.9% of respondents are willing to contribute to a hypothetical Coastal Water Quality Improvement Program through an increase in monthly water/sewer/septic fees.
- Factors that appear to increase a citizen’s willingness to contribute include: trust in science (based on responses to a series of 7 questions) and participation in coastal recreation.
- Residents who believe they could make changes in their own behavior to improve water quality were also more willing to contribute.
- Factors that decrease willingness to contribute include: higher monthly fee, a higher evaluation of home-state water quality, and longer length of residency.
A gap exists between citizen perceptions of coastal water quality and water quality data. Maine residents and New Hampshire residents evaluate Maine water quality similarly but provide differing rankings for all other states and provinces. Mainers assigned lower water quality rankings to other states than did New Hampshire respondents.
Public health information seeking and reporting behavior may be an issue for citizens: although beach safety information is publicly available, 70.4% of beach users do not ever seek out information on beach safety. Furthermore, of respondents who reported feeling ill after eating shellfish, 80% did not report their illness.
Citizens rank runoff and wastewater issues highest in terms of perceived negative impact on water quality. Examples of these issues include fertilizers, chemicals, pesticides, and industrial pollution, as well as aging or failing wastewater treatment facilities and septic systems.
Although most respondents believe that state residents are responsible for helping to solve coastal problems (88.3%), fewer believe it is their personal responsibility to help solve coastal problems (70.8%). More residents believe that their neighbors could make changes to improve coastal water quality (61.3%) than believe that they could personally make changes to improve coastal water quality (46.4%).
