To the Editor:
This letter was also submitted to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
I attended most of the Katama Meadows hearing on Thursday night, and want to write to express my concerns about the project. I have great concern about the health of our great ponds, having experienced the degradation of Tisbury Great Pond over the course of my lifetime.
To hear that this project could contribute to the increasing demise of Edgartown Great Pond is alarming to me. I think any decisions we make in this time of climate change, where warming waters are already harming the health of the ponds, should be conservative, cautious ones. To find out at a later date that this project indeed caused great harm to a great pond that is one of the Vineyard’s most valuable and unique assets and resources would be tragic.
Maybe projects that have affordable housing aspects seem appealing to you or other decision- making boards, but to jeopardize one of our Island’s special places in order to provide a small percentage of affordable housing seems wrong. And to understand that these are just lots, not built units, ready to be moved into, makes them of even more questionable value. Secondly, we do not need any more market-rate housing. We are already inundated with summer visitors, as our traffic experience on any summer day illustrates.
Also, I wonder whether you have considered that terms such as 25-year storms are no longer accurate. Storms have become stronger, and 100-year events have become annual. I think any consideration of this application needs to be designed with this aspect of climate change in mind.
Finally, I believe we need to slow down on the development of this Island, period. The observations that Emily Reddington made about Edgartown Great Pond resonated with me, as I have seen them on Tisbury Great Pond. It frightens and saddens me for the future of our Island. We cannot keep building here and expect to preserve what we all love and cherish here.
Kate Warner
West Tisbury
