Man-made breaches at Island ponds help maintain salinity for shellfish and eelgrass and flush out nitrogen that accumulates mostly from septic tanks and runoff.

Voters at a special town meeting in Aquinnah next week will decide whether to move forward on projects at Aquinnah Circle and Philbin Beach, along with improvements and repairs at the town hall campus.

Three years after Hurricane Sandy struck the Island, flooding roadways and leaving much of Menemsha underwater, the Army Corps of Engineers is preparing to dredge Menemsha Channel. It will be the channel’s first dredging in more than 40 years.

A special town meeting next month in Chilmark will include spending requests related to projects in and around Menemsha harbor, an increasingly busy place every summer.

Without wastewater treatment facilities, Island ponds could be in worse shape. Estuaries suffer from nitrogen overload, coming mostly from septic systems that remove bacteria but not nitrogen.

Jonathan Scott’s new book, Pioneer Houses of Martha’s Vineyard, released this summer, offers a varied and meticulously researched look into the Island’s earliest houses,