Unafraid to stand up for environmental protection, the town of Tisbury has been staying a step ahead in the race to save the coastal ponds.

In Vineyard Haven today there are stricter rules in place governing septic systems for new development near the Lagoon Pond and Lake Tashmoo, thanks to a bylaw adopted last fall by the board of health. The bylaw went through an open public process over many months and was revised in response to community concerns. The new rules will require denitrifying septic systems for all new construction in the watersheds for the two ponds. The board of health also has been working on a subsidy plan for failed septic systems.

“Denitrification is to the benefit of everyone,” board of health chairman Michael Loberg told the Gazette late last year. And it looks like that message is getting through.

At the annual town meeting last week, Tisbury voters readily agreed to spend money for design and engineering work that is expected to lead to expanded sewering in the State Road business corridor which also lies in the Lake Tashmoo watershed. The preliminary work will cost $50,000. In a separate article, voters approved more money — $60,000 — to expand the capacity of the town wastewater plant by upgrading the leaching field.

Then just a few days after the town meeting, the town learned that it had won a $150,000 grant from Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a publicly funded agency that promotes clean energy technology in the state, to test an innovative septic system in the final stages of development. The yearlong pilot will test eight to ten of the alternative NitROE systems, which have been shown to remove the same amount of nitrogen from wastewater as a conventional sewage treatment plant. Early reports on the new system show it could be a game changer on the Island where there have been longstanding efforts to protect coastal ponds without spending millions on sewering.

It is well known that many of the Vineyard’s coastal ponds are under pressure from too much nitrogen, which can upend the ecological balance in ponds by promoting algae growth, blocking sunlight from the water column and depleting oxygen. On the north side of the Island, Lagoon Pond, Lake Tashmoo and Sengekontacket top the list of threatened saltwater ponds. On the south shore, nearly all the Great Ponds are in a precarious state. Mysterious algae blooms and shellfish dieoffs have been cropping up in recent years. The delicate balance of these unique ponds is at a tipping point.

There has been ample study, thanks mostly to the Massachusetts Estuaries Project which spent more than ten years creating a detailed, sophisticated scientific profile of most Island ponds. The information collected by marine scientists who led the MEP studies is publicly available and provides a solid springboard for the development of policies and regulations. The Martha’s Vineyard Commission recently updated its own policy on nitrogen limits to align with the recommendations in the MEP. The commission, which has unique powers to regulate development that go beyond ordinary planning and zoning laws, was slow to update its own policy but finally took action on this important front. All new development that comes before the commission must conform to the stricter standards for nitrogen entering pond watersheds.

In the end, most experts agree that saving the ponds will involve not one but many strategies. Curbing or prohibiting any more development in sensitive watersheds is a must. The acquaculture renaissance that has sparked a proliferation of small oyster farms comes as a boon to the effort, since oysters are filter feeders and help remove nitrogen from the water. And now thankfully technology and innovation also may be on our side, with exciting work taking place around the development of residential septic systems that can treat and remove nitrogen from human waste before it enters the groundwater. There is real hope that these innovations could mean better protection for ponds at a fraction of the cost of sewering.

Extra credit goes to Tisbury for setting the pace.