Construction crews are almost done erecting a large research tower
nearly two miles south of the Vineyard.

For weeks, a well-lighted barge and tugboat have been involved in a
large-scale project due south of Edgartown Great Pond. They've
been assembling what will be an all-season steel tower loaded with
instruments that will collect weather and ocean data. The tower will
rise 68 feet above sea level when it is finished at the end of this
week.

The stage is now set for a fresh round of debate on the third plan
in two years to convert the last stretch of unbroken woodland in the
town of Oak Bluffs to a luxury golf club and housing development.

Main Street Project Asks Modest Change in Vineyard Haven

By JOSHUA SABATINI

The Main Street Project committee presented at a public hearing last
Thursday a plan for the restoration of the Vineyard Haven thoroughfare
after it is torn apart to install a sewer system.

The plan is a modest one. Only a few alterations are proposed for
the existing Main street.

Some changes are to create a more efficient working roadway. Others
are just basic aesthetic improvements.

Listening to the banter of benchwarmers in front of the Edgartown town hall, it's hard to tell if it's 1972, 1982, 1992 or 2002.

The characters have changed, but the themes stayed the same. The building trade is booming. There's a new home on every corner. The town can't house its young people.

"We've always been talking about growth. We've always thought we're growing too fast," said Larry Mercier, lifelong Edgartown resident and respected town official.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week gave Cape Wind Associates a green light to erect a single 197-foot-tall monitoring station in the shallows of Nantucket Sound.

The permit grants the private energy company permission to build just a single structure for collecting wind and water data - information that will further aid in state and federal environmental review of a proposed offshore wind farm. But the would-be developer of what is potentially the first such farm in the United States interprets permission from the Army Corps as a monumental hurdle.

She works 25 hours a week at a retail store in Vineyard Haven. And she's doing her best to plow through a thousand pages of Anna Karenina in time for advanced placement English class, which starts just over a week from now.

Attack Targets SSA Members

New Bedford's George Leontire Demands Resignation of Board;
Former City Solicitor Attempts to Dismiss Boat Line Lawsuit

By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer

The former New Bedford city solicitor, who is now weighing his own
appointment to the expanded Steamship Authority board of governors,
condemned all three voting members of the board yesterday and called on
them to resign.

Campers Take Flight on the Sea and High in Sky

By JAMES D'AMBROSIO

Gas Pump Prices on the Vineyard Top Most Other Places in America

By MANDY LOCKE

Islanders have endured another summer of steep prices at the gas
pump. Another season of shelling out more bucks to get from here to
there than Americans across the nation. Another year of trying to figure
out how fuel prices managed to jump about 41 cents a gallon in the
five-mile trek across the Sound.

Shellfish May Survive Edgartown Oil Spill; Emergency Seen as Serious
Wake-up Call

By JULIA WELLS

The director of the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group said
there may be good news for a crop of about a million baby oysters that
were threatened by an oil spill in the Edgartown harbor early this week.

"I don't want to say that we are out of the woods
entirely, but the oysters may survive," said shellfish group
director Rick Karney on Wednesday this week.