Old House Pond Plan Allowed, but with Oversight from State

By IAN FEIN

The Martha's Vineyard Land Bank can open its 11-acre property
on Old House Pond in West Tisbury to the public, but not without ongoing
state oversight, the Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs
said this week.

In a three-page letter to the land bank on Monday, Secretary Stephen
R. Pritchard attached a series of conditions to his approval of
management plan for the property, strictly limiting the level of public
access allowed and requiring the Vineyard public conservation agency to
submit annual water quality reports to the commonwealth.

The conditions represent a strongly worded message to the land bank,
which over the last year and a half has come under fire from neighbors
and other West Tisbury residents for its plans to open the
environmentally fragile area.

Old House Pond, also known as Ice House Pond, is a freshwater
glacial kettle pond hidden in the woods off Lambert's Cove Road.
Island residents have historically enjoyed casual use of the pond, but
the land bank plan will for the first time open formal public access.

The letter this week marked the first time in the land bank's
20-year history that the state's top environmental official
attached conditions to a management plan approval, and comes only one
year after former secretary Ellen Roy Herzfelder, citing potential
impacts to water quality and rare species, denied an earlier version of
the plan - also a first for the land bank. The land bank enabling
legislation requires that its management plans be approved by the state.

The land bank must also now obtain approval from the West Tisbury
conservation commission for its proposed swimming perch and trail down
to the pond. The property - which the land bank is calling
Manaquayak Preserve - will likely not be opened to the public
until next spring or summer.

Land bank ecologist Julie Schaeffer, the chief author of the
management plan, said she was pleased that it had been approved.

"I'm excited for the preserve to be open, and for it to
be a success," she said.

She said she expected the state to put extra requirements on the
management plan, since it had attracted so much attention. She noted it
was one of the only times that Vineyard residents sent comments about a
land bank plan directly to the state, and suggested that the additional
state oversight was because of the neighbors and not the ecology of the
preserve. State environmental officials described the kettle pond shore
habitat as one of the most rare and fragile in the region.

"I think the management plan addressed the uniqueness of the
property in every aspect," Ms. Schaeffer said. "I just think
the state wanted to assure the public and the abutters that they will
stay involved."

Pondfront property owner Benjamin Reeve, a vocal critic of the land
bank plans for the property, spoke for some of the neighbors this week
in praising the secretary's conditions.

"We're very grateful for the state's attention to
the value of the resource, and we appreciate their efforts," Mr.
Reeve said. "The land bank needs to be a preservation entity, and
we look forward to its being one."

Controversy over the Old House Pond property stoked a long-simmering
debate about the overall goals of the land bank, and the proper balance
between the sometimes competing interests of public access and
conservation. Some environmental advocates claim that the land bank
promotes recreation over preservation, while other Island residents say
that the land bank management plans are already too restrictive.

According to the conditions imposed this week, the land bank must
return to the secretary of environmental affairs if it wants to expand
its vehicle trailhead beyond four parking spaces or allow more than 20
people on the property at any one time. The proposed land bank plan had
previously allowed for those numbers to be raised by land bank
commission or staff.

The conditions also require the land bank to track the water quality
of the pond, and if it falls below certain goals set by the state, the
land bank must suspend swimming activity until it commissions a
comprehensive watershed analysis and determines the sources and levels
of pollution. If swimming is determined to be a significant source,
according to the state, the activity should be discontinued until the
water quality returns to an appropriate level.

Ms. Schaeffer said she did not expect swimming to have a sizeable
effect on water quality, but she suggested that nitrogen output from
surrounding septic systems could send the nutrient level above its
acceptable goal. She said it is unfair that the land bank would be
responsible for studying and possibly mitigating something it did not
cause, and noted that the land bank might have to look to the town board
of health for assistance.

Established by the Massachusetts state legislature in 1986, the
Vineyard land bank buys conservation land with a two per cent transfer
fee collected on most Island real estate transactions. Over the last two
decades, the organization has spent roughly $130 million to preserve
more than 2,700 acres spread out over 64 separate properties, almost all
of which are open to the public.

The land bank in January 2003 purchased the property on Old House
Pond through a straw agent representing a blind trust, cloaking its
identity in the $2 million real estate transaction because the previous
owners had earlier refused to sell to the public conservation group. The
land bank did not reveal that it was the buyer until November 2004,
after it used similar means to buy four beach lots off Tisbury Great
Pond.

It is not known whether the land bank has repeated those tactics
since.

Secretary Pritchard in his letter to the land bank this week
recommended that the land bank work with its Old House Pond neighbors to
protect the ecological integrity of the property.

"The land bank commission has a long tradition of high-quality
stewardship on the Vineyard," the secretary wrote, "and I
trust that you take on the task of managing this new preserve with no
less effort, determination, or dedication."