Developers at a hearing last night described the Meeting House Golf Club project as a blessing for the environment. The project would remove nitrogen from the groundwater, they said, improve the salinity of the Edgartown Great Pond and protect the rare plant known as gypsywort.

Some members of the public questioned those claims. And two opponents of the project hinted that scientific experts will appear, when the hearing continues, to offer different ideas about the environmental impacts of the golf resort proposed by Rosario Lattuca.

Two Boston area businessmen and a Mississippi real estate developer have announced plans to build a private golf club on the former Vineyard Acres II property off the West Tisbury Road in Edgartown.

The would-be developers are Jay Swanson of Medfield, Owen Larkin of Boston and William Vandevender of Jackson, Miss. Their partnership is called Swanson Ventures L.L.C.

Ending weeks of suspense and confusion about who will review plans for a private golf club on some 200 acres of Edgartown Great Pond land, the Edgartown zoning board of appeals voted unanimously this week to refer the project to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission as a development of regional impact (DRI).

A plan to build a private golf club on land owned by the MacKenty family in Edgartown will get its first public airing this week when the Edgartown zoning board of appeals opens a hearing on an application for a special permit associated with the proposed development.

The MacKentys have signed an agreement to sell some 200 acres of their Edgartown Great Pond land to Rosario and Barry Latucca, a father and son team from Natick. The Latuccas hope to build an 18-hole golf club on the property.

The family that plans to build a private championship caliber golf course along the shore of Edgartown Great Pond is fully aware that its plans will be examined with scrupulous care by Island environmentalists.

The Lester H. Dana place, with its beautiful contemporary house on the summit of Manter’s Hill, off Tea Lane, and fifty-five acres of land, has been sold by Mrs. Dana to Mrs. Julia Green Sturges of New York.