Manning the front lines of the Island economy, Vineyard harbor
masters often see business trends before merchants do. As summer draws
to an end, four of the five Island harbor masters told the Gazette that
a season typically busy in some regards was even busier than normal in
others.

Edgartown Great Pond Receives State Assistance

By MANDY LOCKE

Edgartown's beloved Great Pond, a delicate balance of fresh
and salt water that has become fragile as a result of the burdens of
development, is at the top of the state's priority list to receive
a comprehensive estuary restoration plan.

"They will essentially hand us the tools for managing the
watershed and an understanding of the mechanics of doing that,"
said Tom Wallace, president of the Great Pond Foundation, a nonprofit
group formed in 1999 to protect the health of the pond.

Barbara (Bobbie) Nevin Dies at Age 79; She Was Realtor and Towering
Island Figure

By NICOLE GALLAND and TOM DUNLOP

Flags all across Edgartown - at Memorial Wharf, the county
courthouse, Memorial Park and the American Legion Post 186 - flew
at half-staff this week to mourn Barbara B. Nevin, a leading citizen of
the town, who died unexpectedly on Friday at Cape Cod Hospital in
Hyannis. Mrs. Nevin was 79 and the widow of Dr. Robert W. Nevin.

Having been a female reporter in Vietnam, Denby Fawcett said, "We belong to an exclusive club that can accept no new members. Vietnam made me braver, it made me more skeptical. I went thinking it was all always going to be all right. I left knowing that was not always so."

"Every day was different, and there was always a wild card in the deck," reporter Laura Palmer said. "The truism was that nothing was ever as it seemed. Just when you thought you understood, everything shifted."

Tough-talking members of the regional high school committee
questioned last week whether they want to play the high-stakes game
known as MCAS and make passing the standardized test a requirement for
graduation.

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.