A pause in order to plan

An island is necessarily a place of absolute limits –– space, water, and resources. During my 61 years here, I have always put what’s best for the Island ahead of my own personal interests. I voted in favor of the Land Bank and every resource protection outcome I could, including larger lot sizes in hopes of protecting water quality. It has not been enough, and trying to meet the endless demand is not working for the Island.

The water quality of our coastal ponds is impaired –– regular alerts of cyanobacteria blooms and increasing shellfish closures, the infiltration of our groundwater by PFAS “forever” chemicals, and an expanding airport and business park on top of our sole source aquifer.

We ship nearly all of our sewage, and all of our trash, including tons of food and construction waste, off the Island to impact other communities. We further impact our port communities/neighbors with endless incoming freight and tourist traffic. We are a bunch of spoiled babies who insist that our needs come first, refusing to acknowledge the profound consequences of our greed and want.

Meanwhile, our planning and zoning boards and the MV Commission –– our regional planning agency –– are under siege from huge development proposals that supposedly seek to meet the needs of housing, yet completely miss the mark when it comes to managing growth which respects these critical island limits.

Roughly 15,000 acres of land remain, for development or preservation. The Island will be a very different place depending on which way this land goes. It is impossible to plan meaningfully for the future that we hope to have, when we are under unrelenting development pressure.

Many years ago, there was a citizens’ petition to nominate our sole source aquifer to be a District of Critical Planning Concern (DCPC), a planning mechanism through the MV Commission, as one tool to protect this irreplaceable resource. I’ll take this further and suggest that we challenge our leaders to nominate to the MV Commission an all-Island DCPC that would include an Island-wide building moratorium, to give us a fixed amount of time in which to plan the future of the Island.