Posted on December 5, 2025
After five years of effort, and challenging weather, the Chilmark Pond Foundation has successfully secured all permissions needed to dredge Chilmark Pond. The dredging project will help the pond’s ecological health by increasing water circulation, removing sediment, reducing harmful cyanobacteria bloom, and opening the cut between the ocean and the pond.
Current president of the Chilmark Pond Association Amy Salzman says this is the first time the pond has been dredged since sometime in the 1980s. This delay was due primarily to permitting and environmental hurdles, in particular the presence of a federally protected northeastern tiger beetle in the area.
“The foundation currently has a three-year permit from the Town of Chilmark, a one-year, one-time permit from the Department of Environmental Protection [DEP], and a 10-year permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” Salzman says. “The foundation will likely seek maintenance dredging permission from the town and DEP, after assessing the effectiveness of this effort.”
Illinois-based company Integrated Lakes Management (ILM), which focuses on shoreline restoration, has been hired to do the dredging. “We drove here with five trucks and five trailers, over several days,” ILM Eco Construction Technician Cody Cook says. “We’re using amphibious machines called truxors to dredge the pond, and cutting two channels: north and south, and east and west. The dredging depth is about two and a half feet of existing sand levels. This should help circulate the pond and get rid of the nasty algae that has been affecting the water.”
The large amount of sand that has washed into the pond is blocking the exchange between the pond and ocean. “In a good pond opening, the nutrient-rich, usually warmer and fresher pond water drains into the ocean and is replaced by cool, saline, clean ocean water as the tides shift — it drains during high to low tides and fills with ocean water from low to high,” Salzman states. “When this happens over several days, the muck at the bottom of the pond gets a bit of a scour as the water rushes out and in.”
The backlog of sand is due to a number of factors. “Primarily the buildup is due to offshore wind, wave action from storms (the nor’easters two winters ago that caused tremendous damage all along the south shore of the Island — in Chilmark the waves literally pushed many of the dunes into the pond and opened natural breaches all along the south shore), and from closing breaches both natural and human-made,” Salzman continues.
The breaching of the barrier beach is a practice that goes back thousands of years. “The Wampanoags adopted the practice to promote the fisheries in the ponds. Shad and other anadromous fish come into the pond through spring breaches to spawn and flow back to the ocean in fall breaches,” Salzman says, adding that shellfish need brackish water to thrive and that pond openings maintain sufficient salinity. “Subsequent settlers continued the practice of opening a cut to support the fishery, and also to harvest pond grasses for livestock.”
The dredging work is slated to continue through December, and the Chilmark Pond Foundation will continue to monitor and share the results with the Island community. To learn more, visit https://www.chilmarkpondfoundation.org.
