When I was a young boy growing up in Chilmark, this was the time of year when my friends and I would spend most of our days fishing the brooks and ponds for native brook trout.
I invite everyone to come hear Steve Hurley, southeast district fisheries manager for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, talk about the results of the fish sampling survey undertaken on Mill Brook in September 2012.
The Mill Brook is one of the Vineyard’s great natural treasures, with its clear, unpolluted waters that run from the glacial boulder-strewn terminal moraine of the North Shore to the sandy outwash plain that rims the Tisbury Great Pond on the south shore.
Driving over the bridge between North Tisbury and West Tisbury village, I keep thinking of the olden days when all vehicles, whether gasoline or horse driven, simply forded Mill Brook. Those were the days! But we must travel fast and don’t have the time (and luxury?) of the old-fashioned pleasure of fording, to say nothing of the damage it would inflict on our low-slung modern cars.
West Tisbury private landowners bordering Mill Brook may be eligible for a state program that offers to pay 75 per cent of costs associated with cleaning the environment on their property as water flows through on its way into Mill Pond.
West Tisbury selectmen want to clarify whether the town can restrict private companies taking water from public land.
Selectmen this week approved a request by conservation commission chairman Prudy Burt to ask town counsel Ronald H. Rappaport to review the town’s authority to regulate or prohibit water taking.
Ms. Burt said she had seen a dramatic increase in landscaping companies filling water tank trucks from the Mill Brook on Scotchman’s Bridge Lane.
Opinions on the future of Mill Pond and the future of Mill Brook were more varied than the options at a Saturday afternoon forum held at the West Tisbury Library. The townspeople and others who packed the meeting room kept coming back to a central point: The pond and the brook that feeds it are among the town’s most valued resources and worthy of concern and some kind of action.
Without any action, experts say the pond will continue to choke as more and more sediment and organic materials continue to arrive and fill it.
Over 50 people turned out to hear Michael Hopper, president of the Sea Run Brook Trout Coalition, talk about the successes and lessons learned from stream restoration efforts at Red Brook in Wareham, and the Quashnet River in Falmouth, and how those could be considered in the discussion about our own Mill Pond/Mill Brook. The program was taped by MVTV and will air daily for the next three weeks. Additionally, a DVD of Michael’s presentation is in circulation at the West Tisbury Library.
