COVER STORY
STRUGGLING WITH GROWING PAINS, OLD MADAKET SEEKS TO DEFINE ITSELF
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Colonel Bat Guano's former roost on Maine Avenue is a worry for residents of Old Madaket.

Clockwise from top, left: Millie's cottage, the Eel Skin Inn, the Maddequet Admiralty Club, Col. Bat Guano (Tom Lazor), Beverly Hall, "Madaket Millie" and Fred Rodgers (Mr. Rodgers)

The low, elongated one-story summer shack known as the Eel Skin Inn is in the hands of new owners and is targeted for an addition that is proposed to go out and up, an otherwise benign project elsewhere on the island.

But for the area east of Millie's Bridge known as old Madaket - bounded by Hither Creek to the west, Madaket Road to the east and Second Bridge to the northeast including North Cambridge Street - the specter of modernization looms over this West End community like the expansion of the Westender Restaurant 14 years ago.

It is a sign that the snooze button can no longer be used to stave off the homogenization of old Madaket and one that 35 Tennessee Ave. resident Ken Giles is keen on preventing. A member of the Madaket Advisory Board, an arm of the Historic District Commission, and president of the Madaket Conservation Association, Giles is orchestrating an inventory of the houses in old Madaket, focusing on their size and architectural style.

The Independent file

"What triggered this is a couple of developers have come in and bought little houses and they've torn them down and built big houses, some of them on spec, not what we'd like to see," Giles said.

No-frills houses built by those with limited means characterizes the first structures in this part of the west end, but gradually, starting with Lindsay Perry's development of Tristram's Landing in the late 1960s, larger houses followed in spurts. The outskirts of old Madaket began to fill in with upside down houses and additions to existing cottages.

With more houses came more septic systems, putting effluent into soggy ground dangerously close to Hither Creek and the Madaket Ditch. It is a byproduct of the allure of Madaket's laid-back attitude and style of living that could be the financial undoing of some of its property owners. It is already affecting the health of Hither Creek and Madaket Harbor. And yet, the obvious solution is one that nobody wants to consider.

The Independent file

"A majority of the people don't want septic unless it is proven that the current setup is detrimental to the environment," said Giles. "We would never agree to sewer until we put through some strict zoning that protects us. The town is very much aware of this and very much in agreement with us."

SWIMMING POOLS AND BASEMENTS

Go out to Madaket anytime of the year, even during the recent stretch of muggy humidity, and it usually feels about 10 degrees cooler. In the summer, prevailing winds blow from the southwest, evidenced by the low trees, many of them with branches reaching inland and away from the howling winds.

During the fall and through the winter, exposed as it is, Madaket feels the brunt of many ocean storms. Its residents, not of the means of those on the Cliff and the Bluff, built what they needed - not necessarily what they wanted - to survive the west end's weather.

BEVERLY HALL PHOTOS

"You had some very utilitarian, small-scale, low-height buildings that are conducive to deal with the elements; they responded to the weather out there," said HDC Administrator Mark Voigt, adding that larger houses cost more to build and heat and therefore did not work in old Madaket.

Shorter than a ranch-style house, the old Madaket cottages are typically simple one-story affairs with minimal trim, few (if any) dormers, no roofwalks and possibly one or two outbuildings on half-acre or smaller,

lots. Technically, this part of Madaket is zoned Residential- Commercial with a minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet.

Those who bought these cottages as summer retreats found they liked them they way they were, and abhorred the thought of spoiling the minimalism of their rustic creek living style, which is why the slow transformation of old Madaket into more of a mainstream Nantucket feel has Giles and the Madaket Advisory Board on alert.

"There are a tremendous number of grandfathered lots that allow for larger houses to be built on," said Giles. "It's showing signs of changing in Old Madaket and Smith's Point and we want to see if we can preserve the appearance of the older homes. We're starting to see swimming pools - just starting to. We want to get something in writing that says, 'This is what we want.' "

FROM A STREET TO M STREET

"Overall, Madaket residents want to maintain the 'country' and low-density nature of their neighborhood, as well as maintain open space and access to the waterfront. Madaket residents also wish to improve the water quality in Madaket Harbor and the surrounding watershed - Hither Creek, Madaket Ditch and Long Pond."

That telling statement, part of the Madaket Area Plan completed by the Madaket Area Plan Work Group in 2006, belies what 0ld Madaket's newer property owners really want to do with their property and have been doing since the late 1990s.

"You don't put a low-priced house on a highpriced lot, so that impacts the historical character of Madaket as it does the rest of the island, but it may impact Madaket more because you're talking about the smallest and lowest buildings in relation to massing like the fish shacks in Codfish Park," Voigt pointed out.

Voigt said that a noticeable transformation of old Madaket began before his time, around 1997. By transformation he means taller, larger houses with more elaborate architectural features including cupolas, which one or two property owners believed were in keeping with the appearance of the west end's former Lifesaving Station, although all that remains of it is the red-roofed building that houses Madaket's lone fire truck.

"If you can afford to, you can build the house accordingly," said Voigt. "The vernacular is unique to Madaket, but most justifiably in its small-scale lowrise buildings. We're [now] seeing basements, which tend to drive up the heights of the building, and then with increased heights, you're seeing increases in mass and scale."

Giles' earlier comment about the appearance of swimming pools in other parts of Madaket - namely Tristram's Landing/Long Pond and Warren's Landing - along with the proposed addition to the Eel Skin Inn, spell trouble not only for the sanctity of the old Madaket cottage summer living experience, but for the environment that can handle only so much stress before degrading to the point of no return. These warning signs: swimming pools, full basements and large additions to small cottages, and other grandiose architectural accoutrements are exactly why the Madaket Advisory Board is in the early stages of its house inventory.

"What that group has decided is that we want to write down actual guidelines for new houses and second dwellings," said Giles. "We're going to go on the approach of taking an inventory of areas in Madaket and describing the things in there. If you're going to put a house up or a second dwelling, it ought to fit in with your immediate neighbors."

BUILT-IN CONTROLS

In old Madaket, the names of houses and cottages say it all: Hither & Yon; Far Out; Abi-Gale and Tucka Way, each in its own way spelling out what their owners think of their barefoot, sand-in-the-house simplistic summer community.

But as more and more people discovered the delights of a bohemian way of summer life, more septic systems were installed with their new houses and older, existing systems began failing with the added stress from more renters and generally increased use.

Impacts were subtle at first. Time was, at least in Col. Bat Guano's day, when one could dig for quahogs and take mussels all summer long in the mud flats of Madaket Harbor. Nowadays though, the Marine & Coastal Resources Department prohibits the taking of shellfish from July 1 through Dec. 31. That closure used to be for only about six weeks during the summer, according to Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto.

Now the crunch of increased development in Old Madaket is being felt in the bank accounts of its residents. The Madaket Septic Regulations, adopted in the spring, mandate the inspections of all 699 properties in Madaket. Eighty-one of them have been done by the Health Department to date, with 13 of them failing, according to Health Inspector Richard Ray.

The owners of the failed systems, and all others found to be faulty within Zone A extending inland from Hither Creek, have 18 months to replace their systems, while those in Zone B and further upland of Hither Creek, have 24 months. Ray said two weeks ago that all owners of failed systems are working on their replacements.

150 FEET OF SEPARATION

As Giles points out, a majority of Madaket, along with the Madaket Area Plan Work Group, do not want the town to build a sewage treatment plant and lay sewer pipes in Madaket, the thinking being that if you build it, development will come.

"There's all sorts of alternatives to sewers," said Giles. "There's block septics for one neighborhood, tight tanks that get pumped out. Sewers will cost people a lot of money to put in and a lot of money every year."

Right now, said Ray, the 150-foot separation required between septic systems and wells, and the 50-foot separation between septic systems and lot lines for new construction, which applies to existing developed lots as well if the percolation rate is less than two minutes per inch, helps curtail development of this fragile area.

Additionally, Ray said that Madaket's aquifer, with a lens about 18 feet thick, is quite susceptible to increased pumping because it does double duty holding back saltwater intrusion from the ocean, the harbor and Hither Creek.

"We are seeing an erosion of the saltwater- freshwater interface close to the bluff and close to Hither Creek," he said.

Pump too much water out of Madaket's aquifer and sodium levels spike, a danger to residents with low sodium or sodium-free diets.

One remedy for this and other overdevelopment ills is the successful rezoning of North Cambridge Street at Town Meeting in April from RC-2, and a minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet, to Residential- Two, half-acre zoning.

But what Giles is really hoping will help curb new development, along with the results of the house sizeand style inventory, is the Massachusetts Estuaries Project report on the health of Madaket Harbor that is expected to pinpoint pollution sources. Key to that report is Madaket's specific TMDL number, the total maximum daily load of nutrients a body of water can absorb and still support all its forms of life. The town will be able to use that number to limit the size of new houses, and Giles believes that is long overdue.

"Old Madaket has smaller homes, older homes and that's changing somewhat," he said. "We're starting to see bigger homes and we're trying to

keep the rural character." I