To the Editor:

I’m very concerned.

In the quiet, leaf-bare landscape of winter, one can see more of the Island than during times when the Island is busy and the leaves hide neighborhoods and residential enclaves. Driving up-Island, one can see the large houses perched on the hills over the main roads, and in the down-Island towns, one can see new roof shingles and gray or green Tyvek paper that indicates more building. The sounds of leaf blowers and lawnmowers that begin in the spring and continue through the fall are replaced by power saws and hammers, the beep-beep-beep on construction trucks backing out of dirt-strewn ground around the new buildings going up.

I have lived on the Island for 25 years, a short amount of time compared with many. I must have missed something, but I don’t ever remember the explosion of construction that is going on now. How is it possible that our Island has been assaulted to this extent by “progress” and expansion? In the past two years, each time I go for a walk or a drive, I am flabbergasted that there is yet another house being built or enlarged. And we all know that there is almost no affordable housing to be had.

Who is keeping tabs on how this expansion will affect our Island infrastructure? How will the Island possibly be able to handle all of this extra water usage, electrical demand, and wastewater need, let alone the additional cars and people? Main Street in Edgartown, as an example, has been overburdened by traffic, with the asphalt buckling and making the pavement so uneven that most all of us have surely caught our foot once or twice while crossing the street. Many of our roads are already in poor condition, and how will they hold up to the increased traffic?

Sure, people have the right to do what they would like on their properties, but to the detriment and destruction of this place we either call home or love dearly? I have heard word of the MVC conducting some kind of sustainability study, but we know that it will take a decade for them to complete such a thing, and that the suggestions will be scoffed at by the people who disregard the MVC’s import, and that, in that time, irreparable damage will have been done. Am I the only person who finds this development disheartening, astonishing, and almost depressing? Not to mention that I am assuming that many of the (especially) high-end homes being built are owned by people for investment, homes that will be rented for $25,000-plus per week in the summer and maybe for two weeks a year by the owners (one of several homes they own).

When is enough, enough? When is the character of our beloved Island taken into account and prioritized above the want of people with money or the towns’ desire for increased tax payments? And what will happen if the bottom drops out and people can no longer afford their mansions? Surely they will not be converted to affordable housing. What kind of affordable housing could a 5,000-square-foot house provide?

I just do not know how much more M.V. can handle. We do not do regionalization well, as we all know. We also do not communicate in any constructive way from town to town. When was the last All-Island select board meeting held, if ever? Shouldn’t we come together to solve our critical issues, like this runaway expansion and affordable housing and climate change? I’m calling on our leaders to begin holding those all-Island meetings in order to address these critical situations facing our Island as a whole.

Leaving our heads in the sand — how many of these issues have been lamented in the papers for decades? — is no longer an option.

Nicole Brisson
Edgartown