The solution is to have Lily Pond function similarly to a rain garden, which can naturally filter as much nutrient-heavy stormwater runoff as possible through native plants before those nutrients would otherwise enter the harbor or create a harmful algal bloom. The restoration would also improve accessibility through an elongated boardwalk system with seating areas and grassy spots to sit.



“Wetlands are better filtering systems than ponds,” Freeman said. “We know there’s a huge amount of water that comes into this area that needs to be filtered. When you look at ponds that have harmful nutrients coming in, that leads to harmful algal blooms, which could be a problem in this area if we turn it into a pond.”

Those algal blooms have become a major environmental and health concern on the island. The blooms have been found in freshwater bodies across the island and have been associated with health effects like irritation liver damage and intestinal illnesses, and can be deadly to pets. Meanwhile, nitrogen that leaches from fertilizer into the harbor has been blamed for a decline in vegetation, including eelgrass, the primary habitat for Nantucket Bay scallops.

According to the Land Bank, the restoration would improve water quality on more than 1.4 million gallons of stormwater and filter 47 pounds of nitrogen in that stormwater runoff annually. It would also remove invasive phragmites and Japanese knotweed that have spread across the property. “Even though when you walk through there, it certainly looks like a wetland, we all understood it wasn’t what we would consider to be a healthy wetland,” said Brian Kuchar, the principal landscape architect at the Horsley Witten Group, which developed the Lily Pond project. “There was monoculture and not a lot of [plant] diversity. Over time, this area has filled in with invasive plants.”

There have also been discussions about transforming the property into a true pond, which it once was when the English settlers built a dam for a fulling mill roughly where the restaurant American Seasons is located. According to local legend, the pond remained for half a century, until one night in the 1720s, when an 11-year-old girl named Love Paddock dug a small trench along the dam to watch the water trickle out. When she returned the next morning, the trickle had grown into a torrent of water cascading out of the pond, flooding properties and damaging boats out to the harbor. She only confessed to emptying the pond on her death bed.

Today, however, the tide has turned on the idea to recreate the pond. “We looked at whether we could create more open water,” Kuchar said. “[By creating a pond], you would change the aesthetic, but you would also change the ecology of this area. From a permitting standpoint, that becomes a much greater challenge because you would be losing wetland. Wetlands are one of our most valuable natural resources, and from a state perspective, the state is trying to increase wetlands.”

Freeman agreed. “One of the things we recognize is that this is a property people like the way it is. We have Land Bank properties we’re focusing on improving in subtle ways environmentally and for the public because people love them just the way they are,” she said. “The biggest change you’ll see visually is that it will be completely accessible. There will be a trail that goes through the whole park. That’s a big shift and it’s very beneficial because all users can use the space. Part of our goal is to not change it, interestingly enough, not changing the core but maintaining what people love about it."