Martha's Troubled Vineyard

Anne W. Simon, a slim and well-tanned divorcee who cares passionately about her view over the wild grapevines on the shore of Martha's Vineyard, returned home one day to find that someone had dumped a truckload of cigarette butts all over her front lawn. The truck had then been driven back and forth across the lawn, gouging deep ruts and tearing down a row of small pine trees and bushes.

That was not Mrs. Simon's only problem. She has received hate mail and threatening phone calls. One night she heard someone prowling around in her barn. "I became frightened, so I called the police." she recalls. "A nice officer searched my barn and concluded: 'Aw, they're just mad at you because of that book.' "

Mrs. Simon's new book is called No Island Is an Island (Doubleday; $8.95), and it argues vehemently that the convulsive growth of recent years "will homogenize" the Vineyard, "grind its character to mediocrity, and make the place indistinguishable from the brutally overdeveloped mainland coast." The book shows that when developers turned toward the island at the beginning of this decade, the Vineyard was completely unprepared to hold them back: zoning laws were inadequate, the Vineyard's economy had become dependent on tourism or summer residents, and local governments had not thought to plan ahead. Many year-round Vineyard inhabitants, on the other hand, have been prospering through the boom, and strongly resent the idea of curbing it.

One powerful figure who agrees with Mrs. Simon (he reviewed her book in the New York Times) is Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who has drafted a controversial bill that would turn the Vineyard, plus neighboring Nantucket and the outlying Elizabeth Islands, into the Nantucket Sound Islands Trust. Kennedy's bill would divide the islands into three kinds of development zones: virtually untouchable "forever wild" areas, "scenic preservation" lands where building would be strongly controlled, and less severely limited "town planned" regions. All would be administered by a trust under federal supervision.

When he filed his bill last year, Kennedy promised to modify the measure on the basis of reactions from the 12,000 permanent and 33,000 seasonal residents of the Nantucket Sound Islands. The reactions were bitterly divided. The Vineyard's permanent residents did not want to relinquish home rule, and 60% of them voted against the bill in a referendum last fall. Summer people, who pay property taxes but do not vote, would be given a share in administering the trust, and they generally favored the bill as the best way to preserve the islands' natural qualities.

The argument reached a climax last week when the Senate Interior Subcommittee on Parks and Recreation traveled to the islands for hearings that drew nearly 2,000 people. Speaker after speaker in the Tisbury school's packed gymnasium protested "off-islanders'" control over the Vineyard's future. Chilmark Selectman Herbert Hancock called the bill "a federal land grab attempt" that would make the island "forever worthless to all but the raccoons and conservationists." He added: "Home rule, though not perfect, is far better than puppet rule." Cried Chamber of Commerce President Robert Carroll: "The Senator's methods smack of Mussolini!"

Decisive Nay. Kennedy has modified his bill three times to allow greater local participation in the national trust and to limit the volume of visitors to the island, but he says that "the town and county and state governments do not have the tools at their disposal to control in any meaningful way the development pressures." In this view, he has strong support from the island's resident celebrities. "You cannot be civilized about this and be anything but for the bill," said Novelist William Styron as he played host to Kennedy at a clambake after the hearings. Among the other guests: Walter Cronkite, Jules Feiffer, Andre Previn and Mia Farrow.

A decisive nay came, however, from Massachusetts' junior Senator, Republican Edward Brooke, who owns a summer place on the Vineyard. He issued a statement calling the Kennedy bill "too harsh a remedy" for the island's problems, and concluding that "I am not yet convinced that it is necessary for the Federal Government to intrude so pervasively in the lives of my fellow islanders." Brooke argued instead that state legislation now being drafted would permit "an island-wide authority to control and check growth."

With Senator Brooke's opposition, the trust plan seems headed for yet another revision, with little chance for passage this year. Kennedy can only hope the islanders will heed his warning at last week's hearing. "I come from a part of the state with more pizza parlors, hot dog stands and saltwater taffy than you can imagine," said Kennedy. "Anyone who believes that 14 miles of open sea can protect them from these problems has not seen what we have seen in Hyannis or in other parts of this country." Author Simon is even more emphatic: "What we do on Martha's Vineyard is of extreme national consequence. This island's fate transcends the island."

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