Editors, Vineyard Gazette;

We are writing concerning your recent article about erosion on Chappaquiddick and the dilemma facing Jerry and Sue Wacks whose house sits perilously close to a steep bluff.

We both worked for The Trustees of Reservations on Chappaquiddick for nine years and are very familiar with that area. The Wacks’s property is bounded by the bluff and the neighboring Trustees property, the Wasque Reservation. The Wacks have little land left on which to maneuver.

They did not carelessly build on the bluff. When the house was constructed some 40 years ago there was about two acres of land that sloped from the house down to the sand on the beach. Now, of course, it is all gone.

We are hopeful that the Trustees will reach out to the Wacks to offer help, perhaps reaching some type of lease arrangement for a small bit of property. After all, the Wacks are not developers trying to encroach on preservation land nor ancestors of well to do people who donated land to the Trustees now trying to claw back some or all of it by dubious legal means. The Trustees and the Wacks are neighbors and have been for decades.

Perhaps by working together in a neighborly manner with the Wacks, the Trustees can rebuild some of the Island community confidence in their organization, which is itself seriously eroded.

Mark and Patricia Hyde

Providence, R.I.