Saving Farm Pond

In the year the United States signed the Declaration of Independence, a tannery barn stood on the south shore of Farm Pond, which appears on a 1776 chart to have several distinct arms. These, like the tannery, have disappeared. Boats crossed into the waters for hundreds of years. Better yet, the pond’s history is full of herring, crabs and shellfish — softshell clams and oysters — in abundance, until the 1970s. But since that time, the pond has mostly been closed to shellfishing, and nitrogen is the killer.

In the blunt words of the Friends of Farm Pond: “Farm Pond . . . is at risk of becoming a giant, stinking cesspool.”

Oak Bluffs shellfish constable David Grunden worked hard to have Farm Pond included in the Massachusetts Estuaries Project and finally the study is in draft form and reported in a front-page story in today’s Gazette. The study results offers hope that Farm Pond is not dead yet.

Eelgrass beds, although diminished and threatened by eutrophication, are still there, one of the surest signs that the pond is still living.

The source of the Farm Pond problem is far from singular: Storms, erosion, bird droppings and other natural events played a part, but so have manmade armoring in East Chop, changes shrinking the culvert that provides circulation to Farm Pond, and of course housing development, with its attendant septic systems.

Even the pond’s beloved landmark, Vanessa the sea serpent, is there as a reminder of the pond’s health; the sculpture was created in the late 1980s to protest slow action by town government in opening culverts to Farm Pond. A decade ago, preliminary flushing models showed that instead of the 47-inch culvert there now, there would have to be a 16-foot opening.

Flushing would provide a temporary fix, but long-term solutions to the nitrogen problem are much harder and more expensive. They will involve septic upgrades and possibly more sewering. These issues will come up over and over again as the state releases reports of individual ponds around the Island, including the much larger Sengekontacket Pond which, just down the road from Farm Pond, spans Edgartown and Oak Bluffs.

In the wake of the Edgartown Great Pond report, for instance, town voters approved sewering the Island Grove subdivision. The Vineyard’s rampant growth in the past few decades presents environmental problems, but it is imperative that decisions about necessary new sewer capacity are growth-neutral. The last thing we want to do is fix our current nitrogen overload with a scheme that leads to unchecked growth in the future.