The Vineyard Conservation Society holds its annual Island-wide beach clean-up April 17.
Last Sunday, while chasing waves in the Atlantic Ocean at Philbin Beach with my 11-year old granddaughter, I noticed the surf, which had been crashing in, had suddenly disappeared. The ocean I was standing in up to my waist seemed eerily calm. The sandy shore behind me lay perfectly flat, like a sheet of paper. How peculiar.
The long-running debate over dogs on Lambert’s Cove Beach isn’t over yet.
West Tisbury voters, who agreed three weeks ago at their annual town meeting to let residents walk their dogs on the beach on summer mornings, are being asked back to a special town meeting on June 5 to decide whether they want to pay to enforce good behavior by owners and their pets. The warrant is expected to ask voters to back funding for a seasonal assistant animal control officer to patrol the beach, as well as to consider bylaw changes addressing leashes and litter.
While tropical storm Irene did little damage inland save a good salt blasting and natural pruning of trees, the storm drastically reshaped parts of the Island’s coastline when it blew through last Sunday. At Wasque Reservation on Chappaquiddick, 22 feet of south-facing beach fell into the ocean in a 24-hour period. And around the Island conservation officials reported significant losses of beachfront and dramatically altered shorelines. Beaches that were wide ribbons of sand just last week are now nothing but rocks and boulders, and vice versa.
A large number of beaches in West Tisbury and Oak Bluffs were closed to swimming this week due to high levels of enterococcus bacteria found during routine water testing. Health agents in those two towns put out notices about the closures.
Then some, but not all, of the beaches were opened again.
At press time Thursday the following beaches remained closed: Lambert’s Cove and the ocean side of Long Point in West Tisbury; and Inkwell Beach, Pay Beach, Madeiros Cove (near the drawbridge on the Lagoon Pond) and Eastville Beach in Oak Bluffs.
A large number of beaches have been closed to swimming in Oak Bluffs and West Tisbury due to high levels of enterococcus bacteria found during routine water testing. Health agents in those two towns have put out notices about the closures.
In West Tisbury the following beaches are closed to swimming: Lambert’s Cove, Seth’s Pond, Salt Works at Seven Gates Farm, Long Cove Pond, Long Point at the ocean and the Tisbury Great Pond at the Trustees of Reservations.
Beachgoers whisking their dogs onto Joseph Sylvia State Beach for a quick spin hoping no one notices may want to think twice this summer — the Dukes County commissioners are calling for a volunteer-based patrol program to help enforce the no-dogs policy.
