I loved Gus Ben David’s letter about the old Mill Pond dam and his reference to the sidewalk marine biologists. Go Gussie, go!

I’m 75 years old now, but when I was a kid I used to hunt that whole area. The water started up on the North Road near Waskosim’s Rock. There were mills all along the way and I caught every snake, frog and turtle that I could find. The dam at the Old Mill Pond was my favorite. Why? Because there were lamprey eels there trying to climb up the dam to get into the pond to suck and kill all the fish there. The lampreys don’t really have a regular mouth like an eel. They have a round mouth with suckers all around it. They were hard to grab, very slippery.

If they take the dam down, any lampreys that may still be around could swim all the way to Waskosim’s Rock and kill everything in their path. What would be left of the pond would be just a swamp or, at best, a stream. Where did our beautiful pond go?

Old Mill Pond, don’t let this happen to you.

All the dams on the Island and in Massachusetts are inspected about once a year by some government agency. I know that because my mother gave me 80 acres which included Duarte’s Pond. It had three dams on it and the date 1913 is imbedded in stone one of the dams. I can show it to you.

Duarte’s Pond turns into Blackwater Brook. It goes under the road just past Cottle’s Lumber Company and comes out at Lambert’s Cove Beach where its name gets changed to the Coca Cola stream. When the cranberry bogs were built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, they would have to dam up all the water. Then with oxen, they would dig down about three feet and cover the bottom with about a foot of peat moss which is what kept the water from draining down into the ground and. Hence, the Coca Cola brook color when it hit Lambert’s Beach.

The Mill Pond is one of the most beautiful ponds on the Island, small in size, but baby swans and ducks in the springtime don’t take up much space. If you owned a house on it, wouldn’t you like it to stay that way? If they take down the damn, the water will just find another way to get to the ocean as it usually does — and what’s left would be just a stream or a swamp.

If you don’t like the Mill Pond, why don’t you just go back to New York? Or better still, go over to that pizza parlor at Beetlebung Corner and read the New York Times on the porch? Just don’t tell us what to do with our beloved Mill Pond dam.

Go Gussie, go.

David J. Duarte

Vineyard Haven