No Longer Golden Pond

Sengekontacket Pond is in trouble, but not from bacterial contamination, making the state-mandated summer closures on the pond, now in their second year, seem like a bureaucratic farce.

Two years ago after high bacteria counts were recorded following heavy rainfall in early summer, the state imposed a mandatory ban on shellfishing in the pond from June through September. Since then, what testing has been done has shown that the pond is not suffering from much bacterial contamination at all. And the source of the contamination remains unclear — maybe birds, maybe dogs, maybe septic seepage, maybe a bit of all three.

Meanwhile Rome is burning.

Because the real problem in Sengekontacket is already well documented, and that is nitrogen overload. The pond is at its carrying capacity for nitrogen, and too much nitrogen causes algae blooms which take up too much oxygen in the water column, causing eelgrass and shellfish to die.

Nitrogen comes from three principal sources: septic systems, birds and acid rain.

And common sense dictates the obvious: the main source of nitrogen overload in Sengekontacket Pond can most likely be traced to septic systems. Look around the pond, one quahaugger told a Gazette reporter as he raked his last basket of clams last Sunday afternoon before the summer closure began. Look at all the houses that have been built in the past twenty years. Houses have septic systems and septic systems release nitrogen into the pond.

Sengekontacket Pond is the next Island pond due for a report from the Massachusetts Estuaries Project, a sophisticated, state-of-the-art study tracking pollution in coastal ponds and embayments in southeastern Massachusetts. Backed by the commonwealth and the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, the study came out with its report on the Edgartown Great Pond last year and the results were unsurprising: nitrogen overload is threatening the health and fragile balance of the Great Pond.

Sadly, the estuaries project, heralded as a vital piece of marine science, also has lost its edge, now mired in red tape and infighting between state bureaucrats and university leaders over intellectual property rights.

And still Rome burns.

Edgartown and Oak Bluffs already have begun to take matters into their own hands, assisted by private nonprofits such as the Friends of Sengekontacket who have long been involved in protecting the health of the most visible and widely used coastal pond on the Vineyard. Voters in Oak Bluffs this year strongly backed a ballot spending measure to dredge the pond opening around the Little Bridge.

More is needed, including strict regulations to curb new development around the pond and beyond, in the watershed which extends well away from the shoreline. And money is needed to assist homeowners — most of whom are not wealthy — with septic system upgrades to remove nitrogen before it enters the groundwater.

As all the quahauggers who were out on Saturday and Sunday can attest — it’s more than just a peck basket of clams that’s at stake.

It’s a way of life.