Cape towns, Cape citizens and scientists have been frustrated trying to get to see the science behind the state's "recommendations" about what's needed to be done to attack the problem of excess nitrogen in the Cape's embayments. The state has refused to release the data for independent peer review even though the state's methodology was developed with taxpayer money.

Before taxpayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on expensive new sewer systems, they should have some confidence spending all that money will make a difference. Most Cape towns, such as Chatham, don't have a sewage disposal problem as a big, densely populated city would have. There is no raw sewage floating in the bays, as was the case with Boston Harbor. This multi-billion dollar program is solely to deal with nitrogen in the wastewater coming out of septic systems which is said to be the prime culprit in adding the "excess" nitrogen to the Cape's embayments. Is this so? And will spending all that money make a difference?

So far, only in one Cape town, Chatham, have town officials rushed ahead to build a centralized sewer system solely because of the excess nitrogen problem without even wondering whether what the state says will in the end make a difference in the water quality of Chatham's bays.

Chatham taxpayers will soon start paying the early installments of more than $450 million in property taxes to find out -- 20 or more years from now -- whether the state's experiemental program in fact works. Some might say Chatham's selectmen are being irresponsible in refusing to join the nine Cape towns demanding an independent peer review to see if the taxpayer dollars they are being asked or forced to spend will be wasted or not. Some, including CCT, also say that town officials were irresponsible in not putting their entire costly and disruptive centralized sewer plan to a town meeting vote with all of the questions, costs, alternative solutions and other relevant facts laid out.

An eminent hydrogeologist Jesse Schwalbaum, who has worked on the Cape for many years as well as elsewhere in Massachusetts and the rest of the country, has had it with the state's arrogant refusal to subject its science and methodology to independent peer review. Having Barnstable County do a "peer review," as it proposes to do, is nonsense, since its officials have been willing accomplices of the state in pushing ahead without requiring independent verification. Another rubber stamp is not what's needed.

Schwalbaum warns: "As long as accountability, transparency and good science aren't a priority in this process, the Cape's estuaries will remain in peril no matter how many billions are spent."

"In light of what is at stake and the enormous cost, why isn't scientific confirmation and public buy-in a higher priority?"

Instead, taxpayers are being told to take what the state tells them on faith. "Shut up," the state explained.