The Steamship Authority has ordered a replacement for one of the main generators on the ferry Island Home following a string of malfunctions which have disrupted service.
The ferry missed eight trips in December alone, according to the boat line. Through the month of November, 13 of its 3,146 scheduled trips had been cancelled — nine due to breakdowns and four due to bad weather.
About 130 acres of land on the Vineyard was permanently protected from development under new conservation restrictions in 2007, according to state government figures.
The relatively disappointing result was in spite of generous tax incentives — which expired at year’s end — and in sharp contrast to figures for the state as a whole.
Statewide, 266 new conservation restrictions, covering a total area of 11,200 acres were signed off by the secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Ian Bowles.
There is probably no simpler illustration of the dominant news themes of Martha’s Vineyard, 2007, than that of the friendly Rhode Island red rooster owned by Jessica Rose Seidman, of West Tisbury.
Chickie, who Ms. Seidman hatched from an egg almost five years ago when she was 11 and then kept as a pet, had won four firsts at the annual Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society Livestock Show and Fair.
Starting Jan. 1, the Vineyard will be a little less connected to the mainland, the result of a decision by the operators of the New Bedford fast ferry to sharply cut their off-season service.
Not that many people are likely to mind; the reason the service is being reduced is that hardly anybody rides it.
Indeed, the service cuts, from three weekday round trips to two, with none at all on weekends, may only be the first step. The operators, New England Fast Ferry, have flagged the prospect of abandoning all service between mid-October and mid-April.
State auditor Joseph DeNucci delivered a hard blow to the Massachusetts Estuaries project this week, releasing a highly critical audit report on the multi-million dollar project managed by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth to study the health of ponds and estuaries on the Cape and Islands.
The Massachusetts auditor’s report found undocumented contract costs, no-bid contracts and a potential conflict of interest in the project, a sophisticated scientific study begun in 2001 of more than 60 ponds and estuaries from Duxbury to the Cape and Islands.
Aline Pereira Leite has been lucky since she left Brazil 27 months ago to work on Martha’s Vineyard, and she knows it.
This pretty, softly spoken, 23-year-old woman is sitting in the living room of a sumptuous Island home. The view through the floor-to-ceiling windows is spectacular: snow-dusted trees down to the shore of Lake Tashmoo and, beyond it, Vineyard Sound. It is a glorious sunny morning.