Homeowners in the Massachusetts town of Salisbury Beach were handed a frustrating and costly reminder this past week that Mother Nature still calls the shots when she wants to. The community invested $565,000 into building a sand dune that would shield beachfront properties. The project brought in 14,000 tons of sand and was finished just in time for a historic high tide. It was all gone three days later.
Construction of the dunes began in February and was wrapped up on Friday, March 8 before a weekend of high tides (literally) wiped all of the work, and money, away. According to Salisbury Citizens for Change, there were still plans to plant dune grass and install snow fences, as well. It appears all of this was being organized and carried out by local volunteers and community leaders
This isn’t the first time the community has had to navigate challenges with the combo of high tides and winter storms. According to Boston-area media outlet WBTS-CD, local beachfront homes were damaged by both just last winter in December, 2022. Those conditions removed the previous protective dunes and now it seems people in the area are being hit with the reality that the ocean isn’t going to let up.
“It just comes with the territory,” Provo Provencal, a local business owner, told WCVB news. “You can move or you can stay with it. It’s Mother Nature, you can’t do anything about it.”
“If the dunes weren’t repaired over the last five weeks we would be talking about maybe 10 to 15 houses the Atlantic Ocean would have eaten up,” the SCFC pointed out after the damage made local and national news. “The sacrificial dunes did their job. The shock was it happened three days after the project was finished. One of the biggest hurdles is that the state of Massachusetts owns the beach. It seems all they do is know how to regulate it. Our feeling is if you regulate something, you have to be accountable and maintain it.”
Moving or replenishing beach sand is a complex thing. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution that applies to all coastal communities the same.
“These projects are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars,” Surfrider CEO Chad Nelsen told The Inertia just last month. “Given the economic value of beaches, the costs/benefits usually weigh out. But it’s a matter of who pays and who’s benefiting. Are these publicly accessible beaches? Or are we just subsidizing wealthy front-row homeowners? (Will they) continue to develop the coastline because they’ll always be pumping sand on the beach?”
