Editors, Vineyard Gazette;

The Friends of Mill Pond believe that the survival of West Tisbury’s Mill Pond is not simply a matter of aesthetics or sentimentality, as has been suggested in recent press coverage and in online comments and letters to the editor.

The Mill Pond was given to the town in 1948 with the condition that it be cleaned and maintained. And although it would not be shaming to celebrate the beauty and the historic legacy of West Tisbury’s Mill Pond — a fault leveled against the Friends of Mill Pond — this interested group of town residents is equally “concerned for the wildlife, insects, and longevity of the brook and pond.”

Aesthetics and the desire to preserve a central rallying point for community interaction over the centuries are indeed concerns, but it is also a matter of allowing the burgeoning biodiversity held in the waters of Mill Pond to flourish.

This biodiversity was championed by none other than the naturalist Gus Ben David, who in a letter to the editor in 2014 wrote: “In all my years with wildlife on Martha’s Vineyard — more than 36 of them as director of Felix Neck — I find it hard to believe that there is a coalition factor now that advocates that there be a mill stream for brook trout where the Mill Pond is. There are certainly times when removing a dam is biologically sound and the right thing to do, but it’s totally irrelevant at the Mill Pond site. We need that beautiful pond as it is.”

For the past 13 years, the Friends of Mill Pond has been more than willing to help the town leadership and its citizens avoid “not doing anything to help the pond or its inhabitants.” Back then, the select board insisted that all scientific findings be collected by the Mill Brook Watershed Committee and submitted first to them. Efforts to create a similar committee to pursue alternative methods to preserving the Mill Pond never came to fruition.

What earlier generations knew how to do and practiced before the pond’s donation and for some time afterward, was how to live in balance with a meaningful creation fed by headwaters, by keeping the depth of the pond’s waters deeper to provide increased water flow and therefore, cooler temperatures.

During those earlier years, sediment buildup was periodically removed, sometimes by hand brigades with buckets. Because of this careful stewardship, the water teemed with lamprey, and trout abounded in deep water pools, along with water striders and otters. In this winter’s snows, otter slides were observed on the brows of the hill overlooking the mill brook near the pond.

Over the last century, the brook also pooled into multiple private ponds north of Scotchman’s Lane as well as into other diversions. These upstream ponds will most likely continue to exist, and thus dam removal at the Mill Pond will not assist a trout population to reach farther than Scotchman’s Lane.

Mill Pond should again become an object of pride that has set the town of West Tisbury apart as distinctly original from other island villages. It is not a whaling village, nor an old deep harbor town, nor a fishing village or a center for camp meetings for the faithful. Rather, its roots are based on an agrarian heritage, and its lands safeguarded through preservation for future farming families to cultivate.

Luminaries in our town such as Dionis Coffin Riggs, John Alley and David McCullough all championed the Mill Pond. At the dedication of the historic Mill Pond plaque in 2017, David McCullough eloquently expressed how water adds to the spirit of community in a way that nothing else does.

West Tisbury residents should pull together to seek a way to preserve a place of human meeting and communing with pinkletinks and ducks, while making the most of the great asset inherent in Mill Pond’s existence and legacy.

The Friends encourage the town to vote at the annual town meeting on April 8 in favor of the proposed town warrant article that would have the Town create a Mill Pond Preservation Committee to recommend a broader range of options for preservation of the pond other than the drastic alternative of pulling the plug on the Pond.

On behalf of the Friends of the Mill Pond: Barbara de Braganca, Margo and Tony McClellan, and Beatrice Nessen