Promoting healthy natural resources and safe public access throughout Pleasant Bay

Welcome

Pleasant Bay is an area of extraordinary natural resources and beauty. It encompasses two main basins, numerous embayments and coves, and three tidal rivers. Pleasant Bay is the largest estuary on Cape Cod, and one of the most biologically diverse and productive marine habitats on the East Coast. The Bay also is a popular location for sailing, wind surfing, power boating, kayaking, fishing, shellfishing, bird watching, and beach going.

The Pleasant Bay Alliance is a municipal organization formed by the Towns of Orleans, Chatham, Harwich and Brewster to coordinate the resource management plan for the Pleasant Bay ACEC and watershed. The Alliance’s projects, programs and studies promote healthy natural resources and safe public access throughout Pleasant Bay.

Alliance programs encompass technical research, policy analysis, and public outreach in the areas of coastal resilience, watershed planning, navigation, fisheries, wetlands protection, and water quality monitoring.

U.S. EPA recognized the Pleasant Bay Alliance with an Environmental Merit Award for outstanding efforts in preserving New England’s Environment.

The Pleasant Bay Resource Management Plan “continues to serve as an example of how other ACECs and communities across the Commonwealth can cooperatively plan for and protect sensitive natural resources.” Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretarial approval.