Massachusetts town grapples with sea rise after sand barrier fails
A $500,000 sand dune collapsed in days after being erected, and residents are looking for help to protect their homes
On the border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts – about 35 miles north of Boston – is Salisbury, a coastal town and popular summer destination for tourists. But for those who live in the town year round, especially those who live on the coastline, life’s not a beach.
Last month, after a series of storms battered the area, local citizens came together to take the necessary steps to protect their homes. Volunteer organization Salisbury Beach Citizens for Change raised more than $500,000 to erect a 15,000-ton sand dune – a formidable barrier that would hopefully protect at least 15 beach houses from destruction.
Or so they thought. The sand dune was completed after one month in early March, but just three days later, the dune – and nearly half a million dollars – was wiped away.
The tragic incident made the project a laughingstock to some and angered others.
" local citizens came together to take the necessary steps to protect their homes." - the steps they took were obviously not the necessary steps, instead they were unnecessary and in fact idiotic.
The Town of Salisbury did not 'grapple with sea rise'. An ad hoc association, Salisbury Beach Citizens for Change, basically the owners of multi-million dollar absurdly situated beach front homes, blew 500,000 dollars on one wall of a giant sand castle.
I feel bad that these homeowners are basically facing a complete loss of their properties, but I'm more than a little miffed that they expect the state to save their homes because the beach next door is a "public beach." I'm pretty sure the public beach ends where their properties begin and the state has no duty to keep the ocean off their property.
I bet a sea wall or jetty of large boulders would help, but I imagine the residents would complain about the unsightly walls/boulders and want to have their cake and eat it too by proposing some ridiculously expensive or difficult solution funded by the taxpayers that only benefits the residents of these 15 homes. This one idea already cost $33k per home and lasted 3 days.
Massachusetts beach law is complicated due to dating back before the American revolution. Most states allow private ownership to the high water line, but Massachusetts allows private ownership all the way to the low water line. So it doesn't really make sense for the government to maintain their private property.
Now, if they want to cede the beach to the state, I think the state would be happy to build something more permanent. Hopefully also something that would improve the ecosystem.
Personally I think the state should take the beach and tell them to fuck off somewhere that's not going to be building houses in fragile ecosystems.
The state will not allow a seawall to be built.
For good reasons. Besides being a huge ongoing expense, they frequently end up amplifying the erosion, and would almost certainly degrade the public beaches adjacent to these houses.
The effects of sea level rise from climate change have reached American coasts. Yet we continue to do almost nothing.
continued reliance on fossil fuels. As of 2021, reliance on oil, coal, and natural gas at 60% worldwide [2]
no desire to implement a diverse range of transportation options (ie, enhanced public transportation). Yet continued desire to widen highway infrastructure
no desire to rebuild cities to be more efficient and reduce dependency on car centric transportation (no, EVs will not automagically solve the problems with car centric transportation)
no desire to change lifestyle. The amount of meat this country consumes is fucking insane. GHGs from meat production alone account for a third of GHGs [1]
the suburban experiment in America and the “American Dream” is a complete failure. We need to stop ripping up diverse ecosystems that help shield or mitigate effects from Mother Nature and replacing them with monoculture suburbs and highways. Case and point: Houston, TX in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00225-9
[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2021/final-consumption
Not to negate your point, but Cape Cod beaches are a stupid place to build even without those problems. The Cape is a big pile of sand, constantly being eroded and reshaped by storms. The people who built those houses right up against the beach should have known better.
Edit: I was reading too fast and got the location mixed up. Though the problem is the same.
Cape cod is south of Boston, this is north.
Wealthy people are mad that the government is not spending money on protecting their luxuries from the consequences of their own actions.
Homes built on sand dune
Owners ask to halt nature
Cry me an ocean
Maybe they should pull their houses out of this predicament by their boot straps
Anyone who's ever driven by this area and sees this article will be like, "yep".
How do these people even get home insurance? I bet they don't even have any. No insurer in their right mind would insure these homes.
At this point, I don’t even want beachfront property. You’re going to have a bad time.
Depending on where you live it's only a matter of time before you'll own some
"Oh, neat. Oh, crap."
I'd settle for some lake beachfront property
Dunes are a complex ecosystem, dumping more sand (which these beaches do every year) without restoring the ecosystem will do nothing to protect from erosion.
It's possible to restore degraded coastal dune systems (basically sand + grass) by human intervention, but it takes a lot more work and time than just putting down a pile of sand. And the newly restored dunes also need restricted access, or they would just degrade very fast again. Properly creating dunes would also mean that these houses would lose their direct seaview (or be demolished if they are in the way), so it's probably not even an acceptable solution to these rich twats.
In Belgium and northern France there has been a successful 15y project to restore hundreds of hectares of dunes. The budget was about 8m euros, so for the amount of coastline that these dunes protect, it was actually quite cheap.
https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/life/publicWebsite/project/LIFE12-NAT-BE-000631/flemish-and-north-french-dunes-restoration
Next time, build your house on wheels so you can tow it away from the edge.
It doesn't matter what they do, eventually the sea is going to win.
This is true of nature in every form. If it's not the sea, it'll be the jungle, or the sun.
Mother Nature: "Yo fuck yo sand dune, motherfuckers!"
laughter like the sound of thousands of seabirds
The person/company who "designed" and/or built this fragile seawall should be on the hook for most, if not all, of that utterly wasted money
The property owners probably voted for it
Was the company that got $500k a licensed, bonded reputable corporation or was it a dude with a dumptruck and access to a shit-ton of sand? Did whoever it was come to the HOA center and give a presentation "Dropping Science" and make a case for whatever plan for the "seawall" they had? If the property owners legally signed off on the plan then they rolled the dice and it came up craps.
🎵The wise man builds his house upon the rock...🎵
And so castles made of sand... melts into the sea... eventually...
Cliff-side house prices about to skyrocket. They’re the future beach front properties.
Don't mind the applications for fracking on the land next door, earthquakes rarely happen and those cliffs have held up for years.
Brb buying a beach house in Tennessee.
laughs in Dutch Amateurs
Screw their houses!