Officials in Oak Bluffs are turning to an Islandwide public health organization in an attempt to figure out an all-Island approach to the Vineyard’s, at times unenforced, plastic water bottle ban. 

The Oak Bluffs  board of health decided Tuesday to ask the Inter-Island Public Health Excellence Collaborative, a group that brings together boards of health from the Vineyard towns, to discuss the prohibition.

The plastic bottle bylaw has been on the books in Oak Bluffs since it was approved at town meeting in 2021. The ban, which targets the sale of plastic bottles under 34 ounces that hold soft drinks or water, was passed in all six Island towns between 2019 and 2022.

A review of Island stores last year found that offending bottles were still for sale, and Oak Bluffs has acknowledged that it hadn’t designated anyone to enforce the regulation.

The Oak Bluffs select board first sent the bylaw to the town’s board of health to discuss enforcement last year. Since then, the board of health’s discussions have focused on the feasibility of enforcing the bylaw. 

On Tuesday, the discussion also touched on what would be necessary to change the culture around water consumption to reduce plastics, including installing more refill stations in the town.

Alexa Arieta, a health agent, explained that in order to enforce the bylaw, the board of health would have to adopt it as a regulation. She said the board has three options: adopt the regulation as written in the bylaw, write its own regulation, or not adopt anything.

The board declined to commit to the regulation, leaving enforcement in limbo. 

“I understand the intention of this, I really do,” said William White, the board of health chair. “We have more important things to deal with. We have a staff of two.”

Board member Tom Zinno asked Ms. Arieta to bring the issue to the Inter-Island Public Health Excellence Collaborative.

“It sounds like it needs to be brought to them...If all the towns have passed this ban, we need to come up with a regulation,” Mr. Zinno said. “Because every board is going to say the same thing. Well, we can’t, we don’t have the staff to do this, we’re doing all these other things.”

Mr. White said that as the regulation stands, he does not want the town board of health to adopt it.

“Where I am right now is that we’re not going to adopt, as we speak right now, we’re not going to make this a regulation,” he said. “We need to do more research because it just doesn’t seem to work for me as one member of the board.”

James Butterick, the third member of the board, echoed Mr. Zinno’s belief that this should be an all-Island discussion.

“We’ve got to get all the towns to do this,” Mr. Butterick said. “I’m all for eliminating a lot of plastics in our environment…but for us to embark on this solo with no other towns, it just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Ms. Arieta said that she would bring it to the collaborative, but that she could not guarantee any specific outcome.

“It’s a conversation I can have with them,” she said, noting that grant funding— which allows the collaborative to exist— is currently in flux. “We’re attacking the tobacco regulations in much the same way right now...so there’s no reason why we can’t tackle this as a group as well.”