Kids and adults are invited Saturday to help clean the beaches and win prizes in the scavenger hunt.

Members of the Lagoon Pond Association will gather this weekend to talk about critical issues facing the saltwater pond.

The Lagoon Pond Association needs your help.

The town of Oak Bluffs closed two Lagoon Pond beaches Wednesday morning to swimming. Samples of saltwater taken on Monday tested positive for high counts of a bacteria known as enterococci, a bacteria that can indicate the presence of fecal contamination.

The town closed Medeiros Cove off the Sailing Camp Park and the drawbridge beach at Eastville. A harborside Eastville beach remains open.

A dozen volunteers gathered at the Lagoon Pond last Saturday morning to do something no one could recall being done on the Vineyard. They came to harvest floating mats of algae in Mud Creek in Vineyard Haven. It was both an experiment and a beginning for an expanding effort to manage and improve the water quality in coastal ponds.

While nitrogen-rich water can be a boon to plants, it has led to declining water quality and pond health and the disappearance of eelgrass beds. One way to combat the problem, the Lagoon Pond Association says, is to save and reuse nutrient-rich rainwater, thereby preventing it from draining into our ponds.

Leaching nitrogen from residential households remains the
single biggest threat to the water quality of Lagoon Pond,
according to a recently completed water quality study. In a
report delivered to the Lagoon Pond Association, its author
found significant increases in nitrates entering the pond. The
report is based on a series of water samplings conducted last
summer.

Bruce Poole of SP Engineering Inc.