The Oak Bluffs select board reaffirmed its support for the town’s plastic water bottle ban Tuesday, agreeing to direct the town’s board of health to enforce the neglected ban on sales.

In 2021, the town of Oak Bluffs passed a ban on the sale of plastic water and soda bottles under 34 ounces. But over the past three years, town officials have failed to enforce the ban, the Vineyard Conservation Society and other environmental advocates have said.

All six Island towns passed similar bylaws between 2019 and 2022.

Select board member Emma Green-Beach leads the board’s working group on the plastic bottle ban, formed this spring to evaluate strategies for the enforcement of the ban.

“The bylaw which we passed is about litter reduction and public health and all of the maladies that come along with excess plastic and single use plastic,” Ms. Green-Beach said.

In the spring, the board of health told the working group that, having recently hired a new health agent, it wasn’t “properly staffed to be helping with this bylaw,” Ms. Green-Beach said.

With the summer drawing to a close, Ms. Green-Beach said the select board should direct the board of health to enforce the plastic bottle ban.

“The town meeting in 2021 approved this overwhelmingly,” select board member Tom Hallahan said. “Then we have to honor their wishes to do this… We need to move ahead to meet the intent of the voters.”

In the spring, business owners in the town of Oak Bluffs encouraged the board to opt out of enforcement and allow businesses to sell beverages in plastic bottles. Included in the 2021 bylaw is a provision that allows the select board to opt out of enforcement if the provision proves too costly or difficult to put in place.

“The businesses in general feel like this isn’t something that customers want,” Ms. Green-Beach reported.

“Day-trippers like single bottles, because they’re day-trippers, and residents tend to want cases of these plastic bottles, bottles of water,” she added.

At the select board meeting Tuesday, member Dion Alley concurred with fellow board members that the select board should attempt to honor the voter’s wishes before abandoning the ban.

“If there’s a bylaw, it should be enforced,” Mr. Alley said. “That means all bylaws. We can’t pick and choose.”

“I think we need to ask the town administrator and staff what it’s going to cost to try to enforce it,” Mr. Alley added. “You can’t say, ‘Go enforce it and then come back later and tell me what it’s going to cost.’”

The select board agreed that the plastic bottle ban working group should instruct the board of health to enforce the ban. 

The board also agreed to ask Oak Bluffs town administrator Deborah Potter to present a report on the costs of ban enforcement, so that the select board could more accurately decide whether the ban was reasonably enforceable.