What's Not In Nantucket's Master Plan But Should Be

This letter was originally sent to the Nantucket Planning Board and the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission: 

To the editor: Nantucket depends on a sole source aquifer, with no reasonably available alternative capable of meeting the island’s water needs. Housing targets and buildable lots cannot substitute for a safe, reliable water supply.

We recognize Nantucket’s year-round housing shortage. Continued tourism, commercial, and real-estate expansion creates additional housing demand on an island with limited water, wastewater, and ecological capacity. The Plan should address the growth generating that demand and show what the island can sustainably support.

The Plan should distinguish state housing obligations from additional Town commitments. If development requires upfront public subsidies to proceed, it is not financially viable on its own at the proposed prices, costs, and scale. Please identify the gap between what the market will bear and what development costs. Explain whether assistance reduces the existing shortage or enables expansion that creates more housing demand, and what benefiting businesses and developers will contribute.

Protecting Nantucket’s clean water, habitat, and open space is a responsibility to residents and future generations. The Plan should identify who benefits from growth, who bears its financial and ecological costs, and what lasting benefit the year-round community receives. Those costs include taxes and user fees, pressure on the aquifer, pollution risks, and loss of habitat and open space. Nantucket’s natural resources should not become an unpriced subsidy for further expansion.

The Town’s October 6 Strategic Plan retreat materials recognize limited financial and organizational capacity and environmental pressures associated with development. The Master Plan should apply that same discipline.

Before adoption, please provide:

• Remaining water and wastewater capacity after accounting for existing demand, approved but unbuilt projects, summer peaks, and drought.
• Ecological limits based on current nitrogen, phosphorus, and PFAS findings, habitat constraints, and cumulative impacts.
• Consistent housing, population, transportation, and school-enrollment assumptions. Theoretical zoning buildout does not demonstrate capacity.
• Required infrastructure and public-service improvements, proposed housing assistance, their full costs and funding sources, and effects on taxes, user fees, and housing affordability.

Incorporate the completed transportation modeling and allow public review before adoption. Assign responsibility for monitoring conditions and acting when ecological or service limits are approached.

Please address these matters before adopting the Plan and confirm receipt and inclusion in the public-comment record.

Thank you,

Will Willauer
President – Nantucket Tipping Point, 501(c)(3)