Gazette reporter Alex Elvin provided a fine overview of the debate surrounding Mill Brook (June 22, “Mysteries of Mill Brook are Subject for Intense Study”). However, the only mystery I see is why West Tisbury, which holds itself up as a responsible steward of the environment, is not in the forefront of efforts to allow the stream to revert to its natural course. Communities across New England have removed dams and seen the benefits, often immediately in the return of herring.

Eons ago, Mother Nature created a cold water artery in the heart of Martha’s Vineyard that nurtured brook trout, American eels, herring, white perch and numerous other native species that benefitted from its free flowing waters. The dams that now block the flow of Mill Brook were created to benefit industry, not nature. These manmade structures have failed in the past and may well fail in the future.

I understand the scenic appeal of the Mill Pond. Rather than despair its loss I urge town residents to look to a future rooted in the past and envision the beauty of a natural, free flowing stream capable of supporting brook trout that still carry the genetic strains of their ancestors.

As the story reported, the owners of the Grey Barn Farm removed the boards in a sluiceway along the lower portion of the Tiasquam. The shallow farm pond reverted to a free-flowing brook visited by spawning herring and bordered by a natural meadow. The transformation should serve as an example to anyone worried about what might replace Mill Pond.

The story quotes Dr. Jerome V.C. Smith, who described a visit to Mill Brook in his Natural History of the Fishes of Massachusetts, the first comprehensive study of fish in state waters. Writing about trout almost two centuries ago, Dr. Smith said: “Factories and sawmills have done their part towards the work of extermination, and the destructive net bids fair to do the rest. But though much diminished from these causes, there are more or less waters all over this state, and particularly in Plymouth county, and Barnstable county on Cape Cod, where the fish live and thrive in the undisturbed possession of their element. In no place, however, do we remember to have seen them in such abundance as in Duke’s county, upon Martha’s Vineyard … It was here in the month of November last, and of course in their spawning time, while returning home from a ramble among the heaths and hills of Chilmark and Tisbury, that crossing the principal brook of the Island, our attention was attracted towards the agitated state of the waters, and never do we recollect so fully to have realized the expression of its being ‘alive with fish,’ as on this occasion.”

I have no doubt that if Dr. Smith were able to revisit that trout stream he would be greatly disappointed to see that the destructive dams remain, despite the fact that they no longer power anything.

Nelson Sigelman
Vineyard Haven