11/21/09 - Last week, for the first time in recent memory, the island went three days without a ferry. The wind and waves halted not only the flow of people, freight and vehicles, but also the mail.

While island residents are accustomed to having their “mainland” mail held up by foul weather, they are less so when their on-island mail is similarly delayed.

Early last summer the U.S. Postal service changed its long-standing policy regarding on-island mail.

For as long as most anyone can remember, mail sent from the island to other island addresses stayed on Block Island. Post office employees would sort it by hand for the appropriate box or general delivery.

But, according to Christine Dugas of the U.S. Postal Service in Providence, “Block Island has joined the rest of the world.” The post office began commingling island mail with other outgoing mail bound for Providence to be automatically sorted, and then returned to Block Island.

For the U.S. Postal Service, according to Dugas, it’s all about saving man-hours, which means saving jobs; sending island mail to Providence to be sorted saves the postal service money in the long run, she said.

“When we save hours we save positions,” said Dugas.

The postal service as a whole is nearly $4 billion in the red, she said.

Automated sorting takes one-tenth the time it takes to sort by hand.

The Providence mail center handles up to three million pieces of mail a day. (Dugas says the U.S. Postal Service on the whole handles half the world’s mail volume.)

At first blush it’s hard to believe the effort involved to send island mail to Providence, then sending it back, actually amounts to a savings

“Believe it or not, it is,” says Dugas.

Because island mail is commingled with mail that would be leaving the island anyway, Dugas explains, and then returns with all the mail that would be returning anyway, there are no added steps. And it means on-island postal employees aren’t spending time sorting it themselves. It is “less expensive and more efficient” Dugas says. And, except for days like last week, she had no evidence it appreciably slowed down delivery.

Dugas passed along some helpful hints: if a customer asks for a piece of on-island mail to be hand-canceled, it will not leave the island.

Also, on days when there were no boats — that’s a good time to send on-island mail, for it will get sorted on island.

However, she suggests that island residents remember to include the entire address on their envelopes; the automated sorter in Providence doesn’t know everyone like most island postal employees do.