The Island is beginning to wake up to the hard truth: its saltwater ponds are teetering on the brink of a disaster that if left unchecked could lead not only to irreversible environmental damage, but also a decline in property values.

And the Tisbury board of health has taken the lead by adopting the town’s first set of groundbreaking rules aimed at curbing nitrogen entering the Island’s saltwater ponds.

The new rules, which take effect immediately pending review by town counsel, among other things will require nitrogen-removing septic systems for all new development in the Lake Tashmoo and Lagoon Pond watersheds.

Now it’s time for others to follow suit, beginning with the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, whose own nitrogen policy has not been updated in a decade. Out of step with the most recent findings of the Massachusetts Estuaries Project, which has carefully calculated the nitrogen carrying capacity for nearly every Island pond, the commission policy urgently needs to be changed and toughened. Direct case in point: earlier this year when the commission reviewed a large residential subdivision planned in Oak Bluffs, commissioners acknowledged that they were unable to craft conditions that were stringent enough to meet the MEP standards. Their hands were tied by their own out-of-date policy. Lagoon Pond is widely acknowledged to be the most compromised saltwater pond on the Vineyard. If the Lagoon Ridge subdivision is ever built, make that even more compromised.

A commission subcommittee is working to develop new nitrogen standards, and there is no time to waste. How many more developments will come before the regional planning agency charged with being the Island’s environmental gatekeeper before it updates its policy? Hopefully none.

Meanwhile, Rick Karney, the respected longtime biologist and executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group, summed things up succinctly last week following the discovery of a thick bloom on algae in the Tisbury Great Pond that could threaten the winter oyster harvest. The algae bloom is believed to be directly linked to high levels of nutrients in the water, likely coming from septic systems and also possibly waterfowl and horse farms.

“People should be aware the problem is here,” he said. “The pond is at a tipping point and it doesn’t take much to tip it over.”