Across about 40 acres of forest land at Polly Hill Arboretum, some 40 per cent of the oak trees are dead. Just like tens of thousands of trees on other conservation, town and private land across Martha’s Vineyard.
Maybe enough trees to cover 1,000 acres, if you put them altogether, have died off in the past couple of years. That’s a big dying on a small Island.
Edgartown will consider making it mandatory for hundreds of residents in the watershed of the Edgartown Great Pond to hook up to a new town sewer line, following recommendations of a study into pollution of the pond.
The final report of the Massachusetts Estuaries Project (MEP), released this week, finds that most of the 890-acre pond is moderately or significantly impaired by high levels of nitrogen, which poses a threat to eelgrass, shellfish and fish.
The longest-running residential tax dispute in Massachusetts history, over the $51 million valuation of a West Tisbury property owned by William W. Graham, has finally ended with a win for the town assessors.
The last chapter in the long legal story closed on Friday with a unanimous decision by the Massachusetts Court of Appeals upholding a 2006 decision by the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board against Mr. Graham.
Since 1964, the tall ship Shenandoah has brought picturesque maritime charm to Vineyard Haven, moored in the same place in the harbor. But maybe not for much longer.
The Army Corps of Engineers has written to the owners of the 150-foot wooden sloop, the Douglas family, threatening to suspend the permit for the ship to moor there unless they can come up with some solution that resolves persistent complaints from the Steamship Authority that the Shenandoah is a hazard to ferry operations.
Last Thursday night, having turned off the lights after the first full day’s trading at the newly-reopened Bunch of Grapes bookstore, Katherine Fergason sat down in the aisle, in the dark, in the silence and cried.
Happy tears this time.
It was not just that the bookstore was back — albeit in temporary form and in a temporary location — after the July Fourth fire.
It was the smell of 4,000 brand new books. And the smiles of scores of old customers.
Tisbury town government lacks direction.
That’s not a political criticism, just a statement of fact. If you tried to set your bearings by the magnificent copper, brass, bronze and gold leaf weather vane on top of town hall, you would end up lost.
The vane itself shows which way the wind is blowing all right, but the attached compass, the bit which should point north, south, east and west, doesn’t point in those directions and has not for an indeterminate period of time.
