Chappaquiddick Issues Plea For Protection

By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer

Citing pressures from development and the very real potential to ruin the environment in the last rural outpost in the town of Edgartown, a group of Chappaquiddick residents and Edgartown officials will ask the Martha's Vineyard Commission next week to nominate the entire island of Chappaquiddick as a district of critical planning concern (DCPC).

"My feeling is if Chappy is going to be a viable to place to live in 25 years, we have to do something now," said Edith W. Potter, a longtime Chappaquiddick resident and respected town official.

"I think for a long time, people have been concerned about the development pressures on Chappy - people do feel that Chappy is a unique situation; it is a very finite place, more so than the big Island - it can only stand so much," said Donald Crocker, president of the Chappaquiddick Island Association.

"Chappy is in danger of losing its unique rural character. . . . We are not asking to stop growth, but to have the time to study Chappaquiddick," declares the four-page DCPC nomination.

The nomination will be submitted to the regional land use commission at its regular meeting next week. If the nomination is approved, an automatic building moratorium will go into effect until the commission votes on whether to designate the DCPC. If the DCPC is designated, the moratorium will remain in effect for one year.

A residential island located off the extreme eastern end of Edgartown, Chappaquiddick is a quiet, pastoral place populated by about 125 residents in the winter and 10 times that many in the summer. Thousands more visitors use the island in the spring, summer and fall for its spectacular beaches and renowned surfcasting. The principal access to the island is via a three-car ferry across a narrow channel in the Edgartown harbor. Chappaquiddick has only one paved road, no town water, no town sewer and no streetlights.

Most of the residents want it to stay that way.

"Chappy is a microcosm of the main Island," the DCPC nomination declares. "Chappy should be looked at as a whole. Because of its size, what happens in one part of the Island affects everyone else; on the ferry, the roads, the beaches, the ponds, and above all water quality. As the island population grows, our problems become more apparent. It is important that we take a good look now and decide how the special qualities of Chappy can be preserved and protected for future generations."

The DCPC has the support of a wide range of Chappaquiddick residents, both seasonal and year-round, and it has the support of the Edgartown conservation commission along with many other individual members of key land use boards. It also has the support of the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, the Sheriff's Meadow Foundation, the Edgartown Open Space Committee and The Trustees of Reservations. The Trustees own some 600 acres of wild and windswept barrier beach on Chappaquiddick at Cape Pogue Wildlife Refuge and Wasque Reservation.

A unique planning tool permitted by the MVC enabling legislation, DCPCs are special overlay planning districts accompanied by special regulations. Cape Pogue and Poucha Pond are already covered by a DCPC.

The request to declare all of Chappaquiddick a DCPC comes as residents of the small island are developing a master plan. The comprehensive plan is the result of a series of surveys and visioning workshops held last year. The goals of the plan include an aggressive water quality protection program, both for groundwater and the pristine, shellfish-rich coastal bays that surround Chappaquiddick. The plan also outlines a series of objectives to protect open space, farmland and the archeological and cultural heritage of Chappy, whose roots include an active Native American community. Preservation of the dirt roads and avoiding any expanded service on the tiny Chappaquiddick ferry are other key themes.

The DCPC nomination touches many of the same broad themes, and it outlines many of the pressures on the small island.

Mrs. Potter ticked off the issues:

"The ferry capacity is maxed out; the town is having a terrible time searching for alternatives to the summer ferry lines up to Pease's Point Way. Our water quality is deteriorating. The growth in the building, especially of trophy houses, is escalating and every time you build a big house it's not just the building of it, it's the lawn mowers and cleaners and people who are needed for upkeep that clog up the ferry lines. The salt ponds are threatened with pollution and the shellfishing on Chappy is so important to the town."

The nomination notes the burdens:

"The infrastructure of Chappy is being burdened. The paved road is being damaged by cement trucks and other large building material trucks that are becoming more and more prevalent with the increase in growth. The dirt roads need a lot of attention from the town highway department. They too have become an increasing problem due to the increased traffic from homeowners and building contractors."

Numbers tell part of the story. In July and August, the Chappy ferry carries an average of 1,200 cars a day in both directions. A 1997 survey by the MVC found that 79 per cent of the summer traffic is day trippers.

This "underscores the importance of protecting Chappy's unique character and open resources for the public at large," the nomination says.

In another study, the commission found that under current zoning, another 694 residential homes could be built on Chappy. Between 1990 and 1998, the average number of building permits on Chappaquiddick was six a year. The rate is now more on the order of 20 a year.

"Such growth is not sustainable, given Chappy's limited infrastructure and resources. How land is developed affects community character visually, economically, socially and environmentally and threatens water quality," the nomination says.

Mrs. Potter said the DCPC is a logical step.

"Because of the master plan, it became apparent that Chappy has a lot of problems to face in the future and we needed time to work on them. The DCPC seemed to be the ideal way to do it because it will give us a year to make some plans," she said.

Mr. Crocker agreed.

"If you think what happens if the aquifer is damaged, it would be really disruptive; if it comes to the point where the Chappy ferry no longer works - what do you do? There are a lot of reasons for the benefit of everybody that Chappy not get overdeveloped. And that is what drove the master planning process," he said. He continued:

"We had a pretty good organization in place with the Chappy Island Association and we knew we had to get ahead of the curve to do some planning. When all that was done, we said, now, how do you do it? There is a real need to get together with all of the town boards - the selectmen, the planning board, the conservation commission and the board of health - and say, how can we do this better? The master plan has some good ideas in it and they are really just that - ideas. We have said all along that the Chappaquiddick Island Association is a neighborhood group, but this work has got to involve all these other groups in town as well. We think the DCPC process seems to be the right process for everybody to work together and provide the discipline to see if we can't do better. The master plan may not have all the answers, but it gets us going in the right direction."

There is a growing trend toward the use of DCPCs as planning tools, both on the Vineyard and on Cape Cod. Two years ago the town of Aquinnah blazed a new trail when residents and planning officials there nominated the entire town as a DCPC.

The nomination was successful, and the result was a carefully tooled set of development regulations for the town.

Last month, a long stretch of the north shore from Vineyard Haven to Aquinnah was designated a DCPC.

On Cape Cod, the town of Barnstable was recently declared a DCPC through the Cape Cod Commission, a regional land use commission modeled after the Vineyard commission.

Mr. Crocker noted the forward to the Chappaquiddick master plan, which quotes an ancient Native American proverb: "Treat the Earth well; it was not given to you by your parents; it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."

Concluded Mr. Crocker:

"All this is on our watch, and if a place like Chappy gets ruined for future generations while we were responsible for it, well shame on us."

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