A new round of private well tests in an Edgartown neighborhood this week intensified the mystery for Island officials working to pinpoint the source of groundwater contamination spreading through the West Tisbury Road subdivision.

"It's too much of a puzzle, too many unknowns at this point," said Matthew Poole, Edgartown health agent, noting that now 20 per cent of the homes tested have water unsafe for drinking.

Putting in Place a Plan to Save Our Ponds Costly and Politically
Tricky, Forum Hears

By CHRIS BURRELL

By the time anyone notices that a coastal pond or bay is choked with
floating drifts of green algae, the events that caused it happened
decades ago.

Nitrogen leaching from septic systems and runoff of pollutants from
black-topped roadways and parking lots did their damage 20 or 30 years
ago, said marine scientist Brian L. Howes, a professor at University of
Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Eight months after town health officials first detected a contaminated plume running beneath Edgartown Meadows subdivision, they are turning their attention to installing clean drinking water in the neighborhood instead of pinpointing the cause.

"This has dragged on for more than half a year. It's obviously more of a long-term problem," said Matthew Poole, Edgartown health agent.

"The most important thing is for people to have safe drinking water regardless of whether the source is septic systems or the golf club or something we haven't even considered," he added.

Due to high bacteria counts, the state Division of Marine Fisheries
closed portions of two large Island ponds to shellfishing this week
- one up-Island and the other down-Island.

The closures are effective immediately in part of the Tisbury Great
Pond and at Major's Cove in Sengekontacket Pond, although town
leaders have not yet received official letters of notification.

The quahaugs of Sengekontacket lie unmolested this morning, lucky survivors of a mass taking carried out in the 48 hours prior to a summer-long closure of the pond which began Monday.

On Sunday morning Edgartown clammer Manny Jardin was pulling out quahaugs as fast as he could plant his rake.

“Hear that? That rock? Maybe it’s a rock. So you scrape,” Mr. Jardin coached as he sifted through bottom of Anthier’s Pond just east of the Big Bridge. “And . . . voila.”