ESSEX — Low tide arrived at dawn on Monday, and with it life returned to normal here as a fleet of small aluminum boats streamed out toward the mud that has provided a living for generations in this tiny coastal community where the fried clam was invented.
The clam flats were finally open again, nearly three weeks after a sewer break in Haverhill on June 26 dumped tens of millions of gallons of untreated wastewater into the Merrimack River.
The reopening was bittersweet, clammers said, for the weeks they lost are the most profitable of their year. On this stretch of the North Shore, fried clams are synonymous with the Fourth of July, when prices peak for clammers, often doubling.
There is some potential relief coming, after Governor Maura Healey last week announced $300,000 in economic relief for the shellfish harvesters and oyster growers who were unable to harvest during the closure triggered by the Haverhill leak.
What that means, and who gets what, was the topic of conversation on Monday at Essex Shellfish, where many of the local clammers go to sell their harvest.
“Three-hundred thousand is better than nothing, but it’s unclear how that will be allocated, and it can’t make up for losing our busiest, most profitable time of the year,” said Paul Damon, who has been a clammer since 1978. “It’s an unfortunate situation, all because Haverhill kicked the can down the road and allowed their system to fail.”
Damon was outspoken at a meeting about the sewage closure that was held in Ipswich last week, and called on lawmakers and state marine officials for compensation for the impact of this avoidable blow to his livelihood.
After the meeting, he said he received a call from Healey, “and she sounded sincere and seemed determined to get us money.”
In a press release about the economic relief plan, Healey said she wants “to find a way to help those folks out who still have to pay their bills even though beds were closed. Massachusetts is proud of the culturally and economically important tradition of shellfishing.”
The money will be distributed to eligible harvesters in Salisbury, Newburyport, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Essex, Gloucester, and Rockport, according to officials, and an advisory group will determine eligibility and distribution.
Healey’s announcement came on Friday, a day after the Division of Marine Fisheries released the good news that testing had revealed the clams were negative for male-specific coliphage, a viral pathogen indicator, and selected clamming flats in the Great Marsh could reopen.
The problem was that those flats were under a separate automatic closure for heavy rain. This is technically a separate topic, unless you’re a clammer and a Boston Globe reporter approaches.
“The $300,000 is hush money,” said Mike Rezza, one of the employees at Essex Shellfish, “to keep clammers from complaining about constant closures. We appreciate the money. It’s nice to be noticed. But it’s just a political move because they don’t want to listen to the clammers talk about closures.”
Indeed, the sewage closure has stirred up an old argument about the necessity for rain closures, which the US Food and Drug Administration requires states to implement to protect public health.
Massachusetts follows national food safety standards meant to ensure shellfish are safe to eat, according to the state Division of Marine Fisheries. “Because shellfish are filter feeders, they can absorb bacteria and other contaminants that stormwater carries into coastal waters after heavy rainfall,” said Julia Hopkins, a spokesperson for the agency. “Temporary harvest closures following rain events are required under the National Shellfish Sanitation Program, allowing shellfish time to naturally clear contaminants before harvesting resumes.”
Clammers have long argued that the rain closures, which last at least five days, make no sense for clams, for it lumps them under the same shellfish regulations as oysters, which are often eaten raw. Clams are traditionally fried or steamed.
But the state agency spokesperson said that cooking does not remove risk of illness, so closures “apply to all shellfish regardless of if they are consumed raw, like oysters, or cooked, like softshell clams.”
Those frequent rain closures — clammers say they’re lucky to be able to dig half the days of the year — have led to a dwindling number of clammers on the Great Marsh, and devalued the softshell clams it is famous for, clammers say.
“To stay in business and supply the restaurants everyone comes here for, I need to get clams from Maine, Canada, New Jersey, and Maryland,” said Kelly Corrao, 67, the owner of Essex Shellfish. But those clams are inferior to the prized clams found locally, said Corrao, who has been clamming in Essex since he was 12.
“Our clams have a higher concentration of meat, and they’re more versatile, because you can fry them or steam them,” according to Corrao, who said the clams from other places are only usually good for one or the other. “But because we get closed so often, it devalues our clams and raises the value of Maine clams.”
But despite the usual clatter about closures, it was a quiet celebration as clammers backed their pickup trucks up to the loading dock at Essex Shellfish and unloaded their bags of clams.
The flats were open, and soon those clams would be fried and heaped on plates at Farnham’s and Woodman’s — which claims to have invented the fried clam in this town more than a century ago — and the other iconic seafood shacks that dot this coast.
And for a moment anyway, life will return to normal. Until the next closure.
Billy Baker can be reached at billy.baker@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @billy_baker.