Editors, Vineyard Gazette;

In 2014, our committee was appointed by the West Tisbury select board to meet voter directives. Our purpose was to collect data to establish a baseline for determining the water quality and general health of the Mill Brook watershed. This data serves as a basis for drafting a Mill Brook watershed management plan and ongoing town-sponsored watershed monitoring.

We worked with consultants Neal Price, associate principal and senior hydrogeologist at environmental firm Horsley Witten, expert entomologist Greg Whitmore, and the lab team at UMass Dartmouth to design and field this study. These experts oversaw every aspect of our work and issued reports with their conclusions based on this data — the 2023 report by Greg Whitmore and the 2024 final report by Horsley Witten.

What does this mean? It means that the town now has the data and information it needs to move forward to address documented impacts to this resource.

Any action at the town-owned Mill Pond, whether it is dredging or stream restoration (including the bypass option discussed at our 2/23/25 presentation) will require a feasibility study and alternatives analysis in order to move forward. To that end, we are applying for grant funding through the EPA’s Southeast New England Program to undertake this work.  

In response to several questions from members of the public following our presentation in February, the committee is working with its partnering consultants to provide a list of common questions and answers. That list will be available on the committee’s page of the town’s website. We are working with Wilkinson Ecological Design, an environmental firm with expertise in wetland resource area work, to prepare a scope of work and cost to remove invasive gray willow at Mill Pond.

We thank the town for their overwhelming support of our work via two unanimous votes, and are pleased to say that of the $80,000 in approved community preservation funds, $23,000 remains to undertake similar baseline work in the Tiasquam River — the other  main surface water stream to Tisbury Great Pond, a critically important town resource.  

At town meeting on April 8, we seek voter approval of Article 57, affirming the  community preservation committee’s unanimous vote approving re-allocating these funds for work in the Tiasquam. We also seek your support of Article 26 ($15,000) to pay for lab analyses of Tiasquam River water quality samples.

All of our committee and field work is on a volunteer basis for the town, without paid  staff. We are invested and committed, and look forward to continuing this important  work.     

West Tisbury Mill Brook Watershed Management Committee: Bill Wilcox, Cindy Mitchell, Kristen Geagan, David Bouck, Julie Pringle, Angela Luckey, Tim Boland and Prudy Burt