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5.1.08

How Green is Martha’s Vineyard?

A look at six key areas on the Island: sustainability, energy, refuse and recycling, water, land conservation, and education.

Though there’s an optimism of late, “not very” seems to be the common refrain from Vineyarders in the know. The diverse habitats and beautiful natural landscapes on Martha’s Vineyard may make us more sensitive to the fragility of our environment, and recently, environmental issues have gained in visibility here, but our Island is generally no different or better than anywhere else. We – like society as a whole – are recovering from blindness to environmental problems. We still suffer from myopia, our inability to see the larger picture. In our defense, environmental choices can seem overwhelming.

So, where do we start?

For our report, we chose six areas to analyze: sustainability, energy, refuse and recycling, water, land conservation, and education. In many ways, how we’re doing depends on your perspective. As we’ve talked to people at various stages of living green, three philosophies have surfaced about how to be greener.

1. Think of yourself as a citizen, not just a consumer.

As citizens, we vote only a few times a year, at best. But almost every day we “vote with our pocketbooks,” as the old saying goes. There are people who picture the environmental consequences of their decisions and make conscious choices to vote for a cleaner world with every dollar.

Some businesses on the Island make it easy for consumers. Vineyard Alternative Heating on Beach Road in Vineyard Haven sells solar lighting systems as well as pellet stoves that use renewable, recycled-wood fuel, which produces low carbon emissions. Eco MV opened nearby on Beach Road this spring to provide alternatives like corn-plastic cups, plates made from bamboo, and other items such as hemp and bamboo clothing, natural pet food, and green cleaning products for consumers …er, citizens.

2. Consider choices by weight.

Generally speaking, the heavier it is, the greater the environmental impact. So think about what you buy a lot of: food, fuel. You may obsess over paper versus plastic, but haven’t considered the tremendous impact of buying literally tons of food or gasoline or propane. Buying Island-grown food not only supports the Vineyard’s economy, and often means eating organic (whether certified or not), it also means a reduction in carbon emissions from not transporting food from the other side of the country or the world.

The Vineyard Energy Project promotes green energy, but it hasn’t been easy. “I thought everybody would just jump on board,” says founder Kate Warner. “They didn’t. That was a surprise to me.” One couple who did jump on board was Eric Stricoff and Rhonda Cohen. They had twenty solar panels installed on the roof of their Edgartown home four years ago, and are working on other fuel alternatives, including adding wind energy and converting a diesel vehicle to run on vegetable oil.

3. Change your routine.

Environmentally friendly choices are made on large and small scales. Some businesses focus entirely on the issue; others go green where they can. Some households make large commitments by buying only Island-grown food when it’s available; others make smaller changes like not leaving the water running while brushing their teeth or shaving. Large or small, finding new ways to go through your daily routine is key.

Consider global climate change. People often start by determining their carbon footprint – that is, their impact on the environment from activities and purchases that produce greenhouse gases (measured in units of carbon dioxide). For instance, if you commute one hour per weekday in your car, you can calculate the carbon footprint of your annual commute. There are several carbon calculators online. (Two particularly comprehensive and user-friendly sites are www.carbonfootprint.com and www.zerofootprint.net.)

Knowing how your lifestyle adds up will help in implementing changes to reduce and offset your carbon footprint. Offsetting is especially important when there are few green choices for a particular activity, like air travel. One way to offset is to plant trees, or donate money to a tree-planting mission. Trees absorb carbon dioxide – and about twelve of them (over their whole lifespan) absorb an amount equivalent to the average American’s carbon footprint for a year. But even riding your bike to the Post Office or turning off lights as you leave a room begins a habit of greener living.

Sustainability

Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
– United States Environmental Protection Agency definition of sustainability

It’s difficult to separate sustainability from other green concerns, as it is connected to all of them – but if sustainability is at the heart of the so-called green revolution, energy concerns are the soul of sustainability. Our current energy use patterns are not sustainable, with respect to either the global climate or the availability of fossil fuels in the future. A critical step toward sustainability on Martha’s Vineyard is “green building” – design and construction based on long-term energy efficiency with no or minimal impact on the environment.

“We’re staring into the face of dramatic climate changes, and it doesn’t look good. That’s impacted how people are looking at their homes,” says John Abrams of South Mountain Company. “A few years ago, we were pushing our clients to consider green design systems. Now they’re pushing us!”

The industry standard is set by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. Guidelines include the installation of solar and biodiesel heating systems, and water-conserving plumbing fixtures. There are four possible levels of certification: certified, silver, gold, and platinum. The new Martha’s Vineyard Hospital under construction in Oak Bluffs seeks silver certification, with such primary design elements as a solar electric system and irrigation that utilizes captured rainwater, as well as supportive elements like a green roof terrace and preferred parking for hybrid vehicles.

A new affordable housing complex on Jenney Way in Edgartown, due for completion May 1, has been partly funded by a LEED grant. The homes “will be at least silver, probably platinum,” says John Abrams, whose South Mountain Company undertook the project from design to construction. The green-based company has completed many other projects on the Vineyard that John says would qualify for LEED certification. “We just haven’t had a reason to go through the process.”

The state’s goal is to generate at least 4 percent of energy needs from green sources by 2009. Though the Vineyard falls short of that now, John believes the period from 2010 to 2020 will see an explosion in green building with the ultimate goal of becoming energy neutral. “That means generating at least as much energy as we use,” John says. Daunting when looking at the Island as a whole, but achievable when approached one household at a time. South Mountain’s home base in West Tisbury, he says, will be close to energy neutral by the end of this year, generating 90 percent of its own electricity with a combination solar system and new, more powerful wind turbine.

Tamsan Tharin made some eco-friendly decisions for her business. She believes running a sustainable “green” business is really about shifting perspectives. For half of its thirty-year history, Tamsan has owned and operated the perfumery Essense, now located in a bamboo-floored studio on her Beth Way property in Oak Bluffs. “I used bamboo because it grows so easily, and ecologically I didn’t want to use new wood,” she says.

In fact, bamboo is a renewable, sustainable natural resource.

At Essense, customers concoct their potions (by appointment only) at a magnificent, hundred-year-old mahogany bar – a way of reusing, she points out, referring to the four R’s of sustainability: reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover. The perfumery’s several hundred fragrances are in antique apothecary and medicinal bottles. Tamsan also has her own compost site and recycles extensively. “I can’t bear to think of all the landfill sites, and all the stuff in there that doesn’t need to be.” Tamsan believes that our fast-paced society is partly what’s brought us to the edge of this environmental precipice and the first step toward addressing the damage is slowing down. “Now, we all have a personal responsibility to do what we can to make it right.”  – L.B.

Energy

Forget for a moment that Martha’s Vineyard is on the front line of global climate change, and that even the modest sea-level rise that now appears inevitable will utterly devastate our flattish Island. Also forget other forms of ecological devastation: drilling in pristine environments, mountaintop removals, lung-searing ozone, cancer-causing fine particulates, and the thin film of toxic chemicals and heavy metals we’ve spread all over ourselves to produce the juice that heats the hot tub. Forget also the issues like hydropower versus nuclear, and the cool reception wind energy has received here. All that aside, why aren’t Vineyarders better at saving energy? Forget saving the planet, what about saving money?

The Vineyard has some of the highest energy costs in America, yet Kate Warner, founder of the Vineyard Energy Project, and Chris Fried, a self-employed engineer with a keen interest in energy issues, both agree that the Vineyard is no haven for energy misers. “We’re probably about average in energy use,” says Chris. “Maybe we’re talking about it a little more, but other places are further along.”

Take two examples: lighting and transportation. The Vineyard Lighting Challenge (a little-known initiative of the Island Plan, a comprehensive, community-based planning effort spearheaded by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission) encourages households to replace fifteen incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs (CFs), which produce the same light at less than a third of the energy use. CFs are an example of energy efficiency (meaning getting the same result using less energy, as opposed to conservation, which simply means using less). Though more expensive, CFs last longer and pay for themselves multiple times over their lifetime. Yet, forced to face the economic reality, some people fall back on fuzzier excuses to avoid this simple step. Some claim to dislike the quality of light, though Kate notes the bulbs are available in a range of colors that can mimic incandescent light or even sunlight. Those with just a little knowledge about CFs point out that they contain mercury; Kate explains that burning fossil fuels to generate extra energy for an incandescent bulb emits many times more mercury into the environment than the small amount that’s in a CF bulb, even one tossed into the trash. (Preferably, the bulbs should be disposed of properly so that the mercury isn’t a threat. Check with your town about the best way to do so.)

“Are compact fluorescents perfect? No,” says Kate. “But intermediate steps are important.” The next step may be hyper-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) lights, but the technology for widespread household application is several years away.

On the transportation side, one would think that with gasoline at nearly $4 per gallon, Vineyarders would be taking to buses and bicycles in huge numbers. But even though the Martha’s Vineyard Regional Transit Authority has increased service, with ridership up to nearly a million passengers annually, the buses – and bike paths – are practically empty in the off-season, while the SUVs are stacked up as usual at Five Corners. Using alternative transportation is a conservation measure – usually more difficult to persuade people to adopt, as this kind of measure requires a change in behavior and attitude. An avid cyclist, Chris Fried knows that cycling for transportation is fun, healthy, and cheap. But he recognizes the psychological hurdles people face: “People don’t feel strong enough…or believe it’s impossible to bike in the winter; they think they’ll freeze instantaneously. These same people ski down snow-covered mountains at great speed.” Certainly a Chilmarker may face daunting logistical problems, but down-Island a bike or the bus are easy options, even if they do require slightly more effort and preparation.

In the end, it may be economic reality that finally gets us to wise up. Kate points out that even at bloated prices (currently 19.7 cents per kWh on the Vineyard), electricity is not an enormous cost to most people. But she notes, “Every day, as the price of oil increases, energy efficiency becomes more interesting to people.” Cape Light Compact, a regional energy services organization that covers the Vineyard, offers free energy audits to help homeowners understand what kind of savings they can achieve.

People can feel like their personal measures may not help much considering the enormity of the problem. In response, Kate makes a telling comparison to grocery shopping that will seem familiar to most Vineyarders: “When you go to Stop and Shop or Cronig’s to pick up a few items, you think, ‘How much can it be?’ But when you get to the register, it’s $100. Individual actions add up fast too.”  – J.M.

Refuse and Recycling

Martha’s Vineyard is at a tipping point for recycling and waste management, with Tisbury and Oak Bluffs likely to rejoin the Martha’s Vineyard Refuse Disposal and Resource Recovery District currently serving Edgartown, West Tisbury, Chilmark, and Aquinnah. A comprehensive study conducted by an independent firm, Environmental Partners Group in Quincy, strongly suggests that bringing all towns into the district would “optimize recycling...and minimize off-Island shipment and disposal costs.” That, in turn, would help us reach state goals for waste and recycling that we’re falling short of now.

The four towns served by the district have a centralized transfer station near the airport, off Edgartown–West Tisbury Road in Edgartown, where recycling and refuse from the towns are sorted for transport off-Island; each town maintains its own residential drop-off facility. Oak Bluffs and Tisbury opted out fifteen years ago, because an assessment undertaken by the two towns indicated it would be more feasible financially. Since then, they’ve shared a transfer station off County Road in Oak Bluffs, though each maintains its own residential program and drop-off facility.

Having two transfer stations, however, no longer serves the Island from either cost or environmental perspectives. Richard Combra Jr., highway superintendent for Oak Bluffs (where the highway department oversees this issue), stresses, “There’s still a lot of work to do and a lot of factors that play into it, but [re-joining the district] is a great idea that will see significant cost savings.” He gives a ballpark estimate of one to two years before the two towns would be integrated, and says unifying the Island’s waste management would help in areas where we’re not performing well: “Absolutely, it will be easier for one central facility to monitor recycling, especially things that often enter into the waste stream, such as batteries and hazardous materials.”

There are no active landfills on Martha’s Vineyard. Our waste is transported to the southeastern Massachusetts regional facility SEMASS in Rochester, where recyclable material is extracted, and waste is processed in combustors and converted to electricity – supplying about 6 percent of the state’s needs. Refuse that cannot be processed gets allocated to the landfill there.

The Island’s recycling rate for 2007 was 40 percent, which is based on the total tonnage of waste we diverted from the waste stream and landfills, compared to the waste we generated. That’s significantly short of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s (MassDEP) goal for a 54 percent recycling rate by 2010. This is largely because we’re less successful at diverting hazardous materials, construction and demolition debris, and organic matter like leaves and yard waste. We are better at recycling standard recyclables, which make up 78 percent of our total waste diverted. That rate includes all standard recyclables – plastics, glass, aluminum, textiles, metal, cardboard, and paper – processed through our drop-off facilities, plus other recyclables generated by the state’s bottle bill.

In addition to increasing recycling, the MassDEP has an overall goal of 70 percent waste reduction by 2010. This includes a decrease in actual tonnage of waste plus source reduction, which can be difficult to measure. Glenn Keith, a deputy director in MassDEP’s Bureau of Waste Prevention, says source reduction can happen at different levels: A manufacturer reduces packaging or a business eschews paper memos in favor of e-mail – that’s cutting waste at the source. Glenn says even things like home composting or growing your own food factor into source reduction. So while our low 40 percent recycling rate does consider organic matter processed through our drop-off facilities, it does not take into account source reduction efforts by all of the Vineyard homeowners, small businesses, gardeners, and farmers.

There is, of course, another very Vineyard aspect of source reduction that can’t be overlooked – the reuse of consumer goods. With seasonal rentals, year-round residents doing “the Island shuffle” between winter homes and summer rentals, and retirees moving here comes a shuffle of goods, and moving often means trying to downsize. As a community we circulate, or reuse, furniture, household goods, books, and clothing through yard sales, thrift shops, consignment stores, and the shop known colloquially as the Dumptique at the West Tisbury drop-off station.  – L.B.

Water

To be blunt, our coastal ponds are basically drowning in urine. The technical term is nitrogen loading, and it’s the big issue for water quality on Martha’s Vineyard.

Water problems can take two forms: what we take out of the environment, and what we put back. Unlike much of the world, the Island is blessed with an adequate and generally safe water supply, so the first issue isn’t as pressing, though isolated areas of the Island can have supply issues, according to Bill Wilcox, water resources planner for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. (When a town exceeds its allotment of ground water, it has to erect those signs you see about water bans, but they do not necessarily indicate a current or chronic water shortage.)

The problem isn’t what goes into our homes, but what comes out. And the Vineyard, like the country as a whole, has made great strides. Title 5 regulations for wastewater disposal have all but eliminated human bacterial problems from septic systems, though bird and pet waste continue to impact our ponds (witness the closing of Sengekontacket to shellfishing last summer due to fecal coliform contamination, primarily from water birds). Bacterial problems are more of a public health nuisance (no swimming or fishing) than a serious ecosystem problem.

Boating has also become cleaner of late: Petroleum emissions are down, thanks to the phase-out of two-stroke marine engines; pump-out facilities in our harbors take care of boaters’ sewage; and less-toxic anti-fouling paints on hulls are depositing fewer poisons into our waters and sediments.

The problem now, according to both Bill Wilcox and Rick Karney, director of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group, is all the pee. Urine contains urea, which breaks down into nitrogen. This nitrogen seeps from our septic systems into the ground water, and the ground water ends up largely in our coastal ponds. In the ponds, “nitrogen is the bottom-line nutrient,” according to Bill. “Nitrogen sets the microorganisms free.” Phytoplankton feed on the nitrogen, the populations explode, and algal blooms result. The algal blooms steal light and oxygen from the aquatic life, particularly eelgrass, and the affected pond deteriorates into a slimy mess in a process known as eutrophication. Eelgrass is particularly key since it’s highly sensitive to water quality, and also serves as a nursery for shellfish and finfish.

Some nitrogen is deposited by atmospheric pollution and by storm water, but the majority comes from urine. So we find ourselves in a position where our waste, even properly disposed of in functional septic systems or sewers, still overwhelms our ponds, destroying the scallops and other tasty animals that we love and that are necessary for a fully functional ecosystem.

What to do? The Massachusetts Estuaries Project is studying our ponds, and the early results unsurprisingly indicate that we have to reduce our nitrogen loads. Aside from asking everyone to urinate outdoors (vegetation absorbs nitrogen), the only option is to treat wastewater to remove the nitrogen. This can be done at individual septic systems, but Bill says that extending the sewer system to homes closest to impacted ponds, while expensive, will be the most cost-effective option (though he notes that not all of the sewer systems on the Island were designed to handle additional capacity). Growth must also be limited, and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission recently adopted a nitrogen-loading policy to do just that for projects under its purview.

The nitrogen problem is a neat microcosm of most environmental problems on this Island and on the planet: Despite our best efforts, the sheer number of people here creates a problem that will take tremendous effort and commitment to fix. “It’s a very expensive problem, no matter how you look at it,” says Rick. “And if we stopped [emitting nitrogen] now, it would take years to get rid of it.”  – J.M.

Land conservation

Mention land conservation to most Vineyarders and either you’ll hear rave reviews for the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank Commission and conservation groups, or you’ll hear lamentations about the magnitude of what has been lost over the last generation.

Both reactions, in a sense, are right. “When compared to all other areas on the East Coast, we’re doing amazingly well,” says James Lengyel, executive director of the land bank. “It can be upsetting for Islanders to see the changes to their home. But all it takes is a road trip to see how much better we’ve done than these other places.”

And given the skyrocketing land values on the Island, as well as the sprawl that has plagued almost every corner of the United States over the last generation, it can certainly be argued that Martha’s Vineyard has done as much as possible to preserve what makes the Island special. According to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, the Island is roughly 40 percent developed and 40 percent conserved, with the remaining 20 percent “available”; under current zoning, that could mean up to 6,000 more houses to go with the 16,000 we already have.

Perhaps the seminal development in land conservation was the creation of the land bank in 1986. Using a voter-approved 2 percent surcharge on real estate transactions, it has protected over 2,700 acres, more than 4 percent of the Island, for a variety of needs, including recreation and agriculture. But the Island’s commitment to conservation goes back further, says James. “Forty or fifty years ago, Islanders saw this coming and put institutions into place by the 1970s, before things got intense.”

Bill Veno, senior planner for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, agrees. “There’s been a stupendous amount of land conservation since the land bank, and a fair amount before with the Vineyard Conservation Society, Sheriff’s Meadow [Foundation], The Trustees [of Reservations].” Indeed, one is hard pressed to name all the conservation groups at work here, including The Nature Conservancy and the Massachusetts Audubon Society, among others.

Chris Kennedy, Islands regional director for the statewide Trustees of Reservations, points to the cooperation between the groups on the Vineyard. “The really nice thing is that we all fill complementary roles,” he says. “There are few other places where there’s that level of cooperation.”

At the center of that cooperation is the Conservation Partnership of Martha’s Vineyard. Composed of the land bank, Trustees, Sheriff’s Meadow, Nature Conservancy, and Vineyard Conservation Society, the partnership meets monthly to coordinate activities. As the different organizations have slightly different missions, this organization can be critical in conserving properties. Chris notes a recent instance where a landowner approached the Trustees about donating a waterfront property but didn’t want to allow public access; as public access is central to the Trustees’ mission, Chris helped arrange an agreement with Sheriff’s Meadow. Sheriff’s Meadow, founded in 1959, has more flexibility in accepting such restrictions – the theory being that preserved land with no access beats a subdivision.

The future of land conservation here on the Vineyard will, in many ways, be at the whim of the real estate market, though James Lengyel expects land conservation on the Island to remain steady “as long as voters continue to enjoy land bank properties.” Both Bill Veno and Chris Kennedy note that there is less suburban-style development occurring, and more larger estates, so while land may get developed, it gets developed less intensively. Wealthy landowners also have the wherewithal to donate properties instead of selling them to developers. And higher property taxes may encourage less-well-to-do landowners to accept conservation restrictions that can lower property values, and thus their tax bill.

In several ways, land conservation represents another area where the environment and traditional notions of prosperity can clash. High-end estates protect land on an island where affordable housing is at a premium; wealthy landowners pay dearly for privacy and public access is severely limited; skyrocketing
tax assessments cause Island families to make hard choices.

The softening real estate and building market, while tough for some Island businesses, represents an opportunity, according to Chris Kennedy: “It’s a chance for conservation groups to catch our breath, and for the community as a whole to reassess.”  – J.M.

Education

Most American children spend an average of six hours per day in front of computers, playing video games, watching television, text messaging, and the like, and only four minutes in outdoor play. Children who live on Martha’s Vineyard may be on par with the rest of the country, but in general they also have more opportunity to explore the natural world. April Thanhauser, one of the founders of Plum Hill School, a preschool in West Tisbury that aims to be green in both its daily operations and its children’s program, says even seemingly simple things like stopping with children at a roadside farm stand “just seeing those carrots with dirt from the earth still clinging to them” can influence their understanding of their environment.

April says, “It’s so important to immerse children in nature from an early age, to enable them to make that lifelong connection to the earth.” How that connection could help them handle the environmental challenges of the future, she says, is a primary concern in the book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv (Algonquin Books, 2005), which has inspired the program at Plum Hill School to some degree.

One of the points Richard Louv makes is that even if a child lives next to the woods, it doesn’t necessarily translate that he’ll be out there exploring. If we’re not tuning our children into what is right outside the window, they might not notice on their own. “Every parent and educator should read this book,” April says. Some Vineyard teachers already have, at least in one circle where it could really count – the Martha’s Vineyard Environmental Education Alliance (MVEEA), an umbrella organization that fosters communication among environmental agencies as well as individuals invested in environmental education, like marine researchers, shellfish constables, and teachers.

The director of Friends of Sengekontacket, Christina Miller, is Martha’s Vineyard’s liaison with the similarly aligned Massachusetts Environmental Education Society (MEES). Christina says while her focus is on Island concerns, it’s important to be aware of state environmental education initiatives when the alliance plans its annual program. “Every year we [MVEEA] take a different tack on our program; at the end of the year there’s always something concrete that we’ve accomplished.” An example, she notes, is Quest Martha’s Vineyard. Written and produced primarily by high school students, the treasure map–style guidebook (available at Island bookstores) highlights eight historically or environmentally noteworthy places on the Island.

On the government level, our cultural environmental recession has been exacerbated by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, which has made environmental education in public school systems an unintended casualty. There are efforts in Washington to amend the NCLB this year with a No Child Left Inside Act, which would introduce specific environmental education policies. But Vineyard curriculums have not suffered as much as most because of organizations providing nature-oriented field trips and programs within the school system.

For parents, part of the appeal of raising children on the Vineyard is the potential for connection to nature that permeates daily life. But it’s not just the exposure to nature, it’s the hands-on experiences – organizations like Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, for example, host nature-oriented programs regularly. Rob Goldfarb, development director at the FARM Institute in Katama, says, “We’ve had over three thousand visits from Island children and over a thousand have gone through at least one of our programs.” Rob stresses that the farm acts as a tool to educate children. “It’s not just about milking a goat,” he says, “it’s about really making a connection to the land, to the environment, to community.”

This year, the Island Grown Initiative (IGI), which supports Vineyard farms and food, is working on a Farm to School program to bring Island food into public school cafeterias. Outside the school system, IGI also helps educate children and adults alike by promoting the “farm to table” concept. Rob Goldfarb loves to give this example of how important that concept is: “A recent study at University of Vermont investigated how many times it took a parent to tell a kid to eat their broccoli – eat your broccoli; no! eat your broccoli; no! – before they’d pick up a fork and eat it without being told. Guess how many? Sixteen. Then, they did the same study on kids who’d grown and harvested their own broccoli....Guess how many times? Once.” Like Kentucky writer and farmer Wendell Berry said, and Rob quotes, “It’s about putting the culture back in agriculture.”  – L.B.