Summer shellfishermen will have access to Sengekontacket Pond for the first time in several years, so long as there isn’t a big rainstorm.

The State Division of Marine Fisheries has lifted the pond from a routine seasonal closure.

Sengekontacket Pond is overseen by the Edgartown and Oak Bluffs shellfish departments under the watchful eye of the state.

Three years ago high bacteria levels in the pond during the summer drew the concern of the state and caused the pond to be placed under more restrictive guidelines in the National Shellfish Sanitation Program.

The 745-acre pond was closed to all shellfishing from June 1 to Sept. 30, no matter what the water testing indicated.

Shellfish constables Paul Bagnall and David Grunden had been lobbying for some time to have the pond opened again for summer shellfishing. They got the good news from J. Michael Hickey, the top shellfish biologist with the state, at a meeting last week at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.

Mr. Hickey told the Gazette yesterday the opening is conditional and closely monitored. The opening will depend on rainfall amounts. He said the pond will be closed to shellfishing whenever there is more than three-quarters of an inch of rainfall in a 24-hour period.

Any significant rainfall event, Mr. Hickey said, will probably mean a five-day closure. Water testing will be done to make sure the pond is okay before reopening.

The rainfall data will be gathered on the Island, though Mr. Hickey said the two towns may at some point have to run their own rain gauges.

Mr. Hickey said much of the impetus to stop the mandatory closure came from the two towns’ own efforts to monitor and manage the pond. “Both towns have worked hard trying to find the pollution sources, doing what they can to maintain the openings. I think over the years the pond has gotten shallower.” This has restricted the circulation. “We will continue to work with the towns on this,” he said.

Mr. Grunden said the closing three years ago was tied to rainfall events during the summer and may have included also high tides washing over the beaches.

Since that bad year, Mr. Grunden said, the towns with the help of volunteers have taken aggressive steps to monitor the pond. “In 2008, we had funding through the towns and the Friends of Sengekontacket to do a lot of our own water sampling.”

Mr. Grunden said they sought to find out where the bacteria was coming from, down to what species, whether it was mammal or avian. “Basically the results were that the majority of it was coming from birds,” Mr. Grunden said.

In the summer of 2008, volunteers with clipboards were sent to walk the entire shoreline of Sengekontacket Pond to look for any other potential sources of the bacteria.

Last year, the pond seemed cleaner than either of the previous two years. Mr. Grunden said there wasn’t enough bacteria in the pond to sample to determine the source, whether avian or mammal.

“It was clean most of the time,” Mr. Grunden said.

“There was one event,” Mr. Grunden said, and it was tied to a rainstorm.

For the past three years, anyone interested in quahauging had to go elsewhere, but prior to the summer closures, Sengekontacket Pond was a first choice for quahaugs for Oak Bluffs’ shellfish enthusiasts.

“For many, shellfishing was a part of their summer time on the Island. They’d go out and get a mess of quahaugs,” Mr. Grunden said. This summer they will be able to go out again, when they purchase a town shellfish permit.

Mr. Grunden recalls as many as 50 people at a time showing up to go quahauging, whenever word got out that he’d opened a section of the pond specifically for “the rakers.”

“This is really good news,” he said, adding:

“We still have a lot of work ahead to bring the pond back into better shape.”

Included in those efforts, Mr. Grunden said, is maintenance dredging of a channel in the pond that runs from the Big Bridge to the Little Bridge. If all goes as hoped, dredging will be done in the fall.

“We still have to address the nutrient loading issues in the pond,” Mr. Grunden said. There remains an ongoing concern about nutrient-loaded groundwater leaching into the pond from homes nearby.

Sengekontacket Pond, like any other coastal pond in the Commonwealth, may still be closed by the state during the upcoming summer season because of health issues, but it will be at the discretion of the state and based on water testing.

“I think it is wonderful,” said Duncan Ross, selectman from Oak Bluffs and chairman of the Oak Bluffs-Edgartown joint committee on Sengekontacket. “I thank the work of the committee; they’ve been educating the public about what they can do to help keep the pond healthy.”

Mr. Ross is an avid shellfisherman and looks forward to summer. “I plan to go every week,” he said.