A nine-month investigation by state and local police into possible fraud at the Edgartown wastewater treatment plant concluded this week with a criminal complaint against an Island septic hauler, alongside allegations of widespread mismanagement at the sewer plant and possible ethics violations by town employees and elected officials.
A long-running effort by an Aquinnah property owner to build a house on a lot off Moshup Trail was blocked by the town planning board plan review committee this week, which found the lot lacks adequate road frontage under new zoning rules adopted by the town eight months ago.
After a series of public hearings that began in October, the committee voted 7-0 on Tuesday night to deny a special permit for James Decoulos to build on the two-plus-acre property.
A well-known Cambridge businessman and prominent seasonal resident of Edgartown is a key backer of a bill quietly making its way through the Massachusetts legislature that has the potential to affect dramatically the ownership rights on barrier beaches around Great Ponds, the Gazette has learned.
The ocean-facing beach around the treacherous breach at Norton Point Beach on the Chappaquiddick side was closed to swimmers yesterday following a fatality over the weekend.
An overhaul of the shuttered state lobster hatchery in Oak Bluffs has been approved by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and the commonwealth will now invest a significant sum of money to rehabilitate the facility for use by the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group, Cape and Islands Rep. Timothy Madden announced yesterday.
Mr. Madden said the state DMF has agreed to invest at least $250,000 in the project in phases. Work began this week to replace the plumbing in the old hatchery that sits on the eastern side of the Lagoon Pond in Oak Bluffs.
It’s the quiet season now but it was hardly quiet at Bramhall & Dunn on Main street Vineyard Haven yesterday, where the phone was ringing off the hook. And there was Emily Bramhall herself answering, slightly breathless from so many calls, this time from a reporter.
The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank added a small but significant piece of land to its holdings at the scenic Gay Head Cliffs this week with the purchase of a single acre near the historic clay cliffs in the westernmost reaches of the Vineyard. The seller was the Vineyard Open Land Foundation. The purchase price was $225,000.
The fourth grade theatre project, an unusual creative drama enrichment program for Island school children led by the Vineyard Playhouse for the past 17 years, will be suspended this year, playhouse director MJ Bruder Munafo said this week.
Ms. Bruder Munafo said she was surprised and baffled to learn that the Vineyard elementary schools had decided not to participate in the project, which through the years has given some 2,000 fourth graders the hands-on experience of writing, producing, directing, staging and performing an original play.
Whippoorwill Farm, home of the first Community Supported Agriculture program on the Vineyard, will move its operation from Thimble Farm in Oak Bluffs back to Old County Road, farm owner Andrew Woodruff said this week.
