It’s Move It or Lose It in Path of a Nor’easter

PLUM ISLAND, Mass. — Barbara Murray walked her dog past a ribbon of the police tape that wound its way around sections of this scenic barrier island, about an hour north of Boston, where she has lived for 50 years.She ascended a sandy driveway and watched three construction workers, one driving a construction scoop, stack concrete blocks and cover them with sand and plastic cloth — an effort to protect a recently built home here in the town of Newbury from waves that have been ravenously consuming the shoreline this winter.
“It’s not going to work,” Ms. Murray said. “You’re not going to stop the ocean. It’s too powerful.”


The winter storm, which unexpectedly missed Washington, sucked sand from the beach and dragged waves high up on the shore. Last week, six homes were demolished by construction crews, having been irreparably damaged in the storm. Seven more were too dangerous to be occupied.

An additional 24 homes are considered to be in imminent danger of being seriously damaged should there be another storm or an abnormally high tide, which means residents were warily watching a new winter storm expected to reach here on Monday night.

“We’ve had one horrendous winter since, really, Hurricane Sandy,” said Robert Connors, who owns a construction company and lives in a house raised above the sand on pilings. “Our beach and our dune system has been leaking, compromised, and now it’s just completely done.”

The storm damage was so serious that state officials made an exception to rules preventing what is known as hard coastal armoring along this coast, including the construction of bulkheads and concrete-block walls to protect against waves and erosion. They are allowing people whose houses are still standing to put up walls that they say are one of the only ways to protect the structures in the short term. But that is only for now.

“When the emergency conditions abate, we will be inspecting those properties,” said Kenneth L. Kimmell, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. “And in all likelihood, those hard structures they’re putting in will have to be removed.”Many residents are frustrated that they have not been able to do more to shore up the coastline, but some officials are calling for a different strategy to face the reality of increasingly violent storms and rising seas.

The best solution, the officials say, would be to move some of the homes up and away from what they consider part of the fastest-shrinking coastline in Massachusetts.

Barrier islands are subject to the whims of wind and waves. Plum Island has lost about 100 feet of beach in the last 20 years, much of it in the last five. Meanwhile, shoreline development has increased, with the fisherman’s shacks that used to dot the coast replaced by homes and infrastructure.

http://www.dailynewscrunch.com/science/it-s-move-it-or-lose-it-in-path-of-a-nor-easter/