To the Editor:
More than 30,000 small dams currently block river tributaries from Maine to Maryland, according to a recent story, “How Tearing Down Small Dams Is Helping Restore Northeast Rivers,” published in the online magazine Yale Environment 360. One of those dams creates Mill Pond.
The Friends of Mill Pond say preserving the obsolete dam and artificial pond is “not simply a matter of aesthetics or sentimentality,” while disregarding the ecological science that supports a free-flowing natural brook.
The Friends want community awareness to remain anchored in a historical delusion that the impoundment is other than what it is: an integral part of Mill Brook.
In a disingenuous slap in the face to the hard work of the Mill Brook Watershed Management Committee, which recently released a report on the bleak state of the brook, the Friends will ask town voters to create a separate committee whose goal would be to preserve the pond. Voters would do well to read the Watershed Committee report, available on the town website (bit.ly/WT_MillBrookCommitteeReport).
Dams restrict natural migrations and affect species distribution and reproduction. Juvenile American eels, known as elvers, returning from the Sargasso Sea, and delicate and beautiful native brook trout indicate a healthy environment. They are as much a part of our natural heritage as the ospreys that feed on returning herring each spring. Native Americans saw no need to alter an ecosystem where these species thrived.
The Friends of Mill Pond cite the town’s agrarian history, and “earlier generations,” who knew how to live in balance with an artificial pond. However, the brook’s heritage began well before English colonists blocked the stream. The dam and impoundment created to power mills are no more deserving of preservation than the rows of industrial-size wind turbines generating electrical power now blinking off our coast will be when they no longer turn.
Nelson Sigelman
Vineyard Haven
