Cribbing a famous line from an infamous late U.S. president, it is public enemy number one in Southeastern Massachusetts, although this time the enemy is not drugs but nitrogen. Nitrogen poses a serious threat to the health of our coastal ponds and saltwater embayments that were once pristine and are now in alarming states of decline. Eelgrass beds are gone or disappearing, and along with them the clean shellfish that both provide a rich source of food and form a key cog in the local economy.

From Gazette editions of January 1987:

The Wintertide Coffeehouse reopens for its 1987 season on Saturday in a new location: the Manter Memorial Youth Hostel on the Edgartown Road.

The Cape and Islands legislative delegation has jumped into the fray surrounding cable television contract talks for the Vineyard. State Sen. Dan Wolf and Rep. Tim Madden are scheduled to meet in Boston with Comcast representatives next week, where they said they will press the cable giant to provide service to Chappaquiddick as part of the upcoming contract.

Seth Rolbein, senior advisor to Senator Wolf, said yesterday that the conflict over whether to provide cable to Chappy represents a much broader issue for the Cape and the Islands.

Gary Harcourt is a cabinetmaker by trade. He still views his work installing wind turbines as a side gig, albeit one that has brought him around the world, hoisting turbines over potato farms in the English countryside and working on test rigs in Vancouver. In November Mr. Harcourt raised his 50th turbine at the Allen Farm in Chilmark. It was the 12th turbine raised on-Island by Great Rock Windpower, the company founded by Mr. Harcourt along with Larry Schubert and Mr. Harcourt’s wife, Kathryn.

Concerned down-Island homeowners and some experts are reporting an unusual and troubling abundance of the ravenous creatures. If confirmed the Island’s trees face a cruel spring, but it appears that the damage, though severe, may be localized.

The Chilmark planning board this week took up the thorny subject of large houses, their impact on the environment and how to regulate them.

At a special meeting Wednesday afternoon that drew a small crowd, the planning board announced the formation of a large house working group charged with determining whether existing zoning bylaws should be changed to limit house sizes.

Planning board chairman Janet Weidner said it would be the first of many discussions.

Frustrated by policies that increase overfishing, a San Francisco-based environmental group filed suit in federal court last week against the National Marine Fisheries Service, charging that its most recent rule changes are allowing additional harvesting of bluefin tuna by expanding the fishing season.

The original posts and beams from the 1755 house sag with history. Bittersweet clings to the rafters of the 1850 barn. Milking stalls still stand from the 1950s, waiting for the cows to come home.

Tea Lane Farm has been many things in its more than 250-year history — a longtime dairy farm, once a vegetable farm and even host to a Revolutionary War contraband tea operation.

Now, with any luck the old farm off Middle Road in Chilmark will soon get another lease on life with a new tenant farmer.

Three months after abruptly shuttering operations on the Vineyard and laying off much of its staff nationwide, the lifestyle cable network Plum TV said this week it has filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

The Vineyard Gazette has named Joel Greenberg as managing editor, the newspaper’s publisher Jane Seagrave announced this week.

Mr. Greenberg comes to the Gazette after 20 years at The Los Angeles Times, where he served as science and medicine editor. For the last two years he has worked as a writer in the media relations office of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.