For North Beach, A Year Of Shifting Sands
|
by Alan Pollock
|
|
|
CHATHAM — At this time last year, no one knew that the events about to
unfold on North Beach would fill so many pages of newsprint, spark such
scientific and public debate, and complete so many melancholy scrapbook
pages. For the venerable barrier beach, it has indeed been a year of
change.
In the predawn hours of April 16, 2007, an unusual spring storm that
coincided with high astronomical tides sent the Atlantic Ocean spilling over
North Beach in four places. A month later, officials were describing the
washover as a new inlet, and the southern end of the beach had become
an island.
Washover or inlet?
Given that the ocean overtops the barrier beach in various spots nearly
every winter, and has washed over just south of the First Village
|
The Eldredge family watches somberly as
their camp, Backlash, is demolished.
JENNIFER ELDREDGE STELLO PHOTO
|
many times, it was not surprising that most experts and beach-watchers predicted that the washover would
eventually fill with sand. Chatham Coastal Resources Director Ted Keon held that early opinion, and showed
early aerial photos to a number of colleagues who agreed that the large volume of incoming sand would likely
clog the opening.
“It was perhaps more hope, but there was fairly sizeable evidence that it [the closure of the beach] was likely to
occur,” Keon said this week. Those who studied the 1987 inlet by the lighthouse knew that it was straining to
accommodate the tidal flow to Pleasant Bay, with a large volume of water passing through the narrow channel
off Watch Hill, threatening to undermine the rock revetment there.
An early warning system, in the form of a tide gauge in the upper reaches of Pleasant Bay, did provide
evidence of a telltale lag between inside and outside tides, Keon said. The tide data indicated that there was a
pressure differential on either side of the barrier beach, but it was assumed that the inlet by the lighthouse was
still efficient enough to handle the flow. Experts also could not know that the washover would be followed by a
prolonged period of calm weather, without even modest onshore winds to help fill the gap with the sand that was
just offshore, Keon said.
On May 22, Keon said he believed the washover was showing the characteristics of becoming an inlet. The
word had such power that Keon jokingly referred to it as the “i-word.”
Could it have been filled?
It was on that day that Keon received permission from the board of selectmen to begin exploring the permits
required to fill the inlet with dredged sand. Coincidentally, the county dredge Codfish was in the harbor at the
time. Town officials promptly discovered that any dredging project would have to overcome a daunting
regulatory process involving many state, federal and local regulators. Officials from the Cape Cod National
Seashore signaled that they would oppose any effort to fill the breach.
Given the very wide size of the inlet now, was it feasible to think that the hole could have been physically filled
with sand, with lasting effect?
“I have no doubt,” Keon said. At the time the Codfish was in the harbor, the inlet was small enough that the
dredge could readily have filled the gap, reducing the tidal exchange that kept the water flowing through at all
tides.
“It wouldn’t have taken a lot of volume to have sufficiently shut the flow,” he said. Ignoring the issues of
permitting and public consensus, “it would’ve been a fairly straightforward procedure,” Keon said.
On June 12, selectmen voted to convene a special town meeting to consider hiring a large, ocean-going
dredge to fill the now-well-established inlet with sand dredged from a nearby shoal. The effort was expected to
cost around $2 million. A referendum question on the warrant asked voters whether they even favor the idea of
closing the beach.
A number of camp owners and North Chatham shorefront property owners organized as Save Our Shores
(SOS) and lobbied for passage of the articles. One member of SOS, Minister’s Point resident Gerald Milden,
complained that the surf coming through the new inlet was pounding his timber bulkhead with new intensity. He
warned that certain shoreline properties in the area would be left vulnerable by the inlet. Interviewed this week,
Milden said there is evidence that the beaches around the point are now accreting sand.
“I think we’re all going to pick up beaches, just as they did out at the lighthouse” after the 1987 break, he
said. But Milden said he remains concerned for unprotected coastal properties in the event of a major
hurricane. “We don’t have the beach to break a major storm,” he said.
By the time the July 31 special town meeting was held, the inlet was significantly larger, and the estimated
cost of filling the inlet had doubled. The articles were all soundly defeated, including one that sought $150,000
to study the future impacts of the inlet.
Even at that late date, it would have been physically possible for the inlet to be filled, Keon said. At the time,
town staff remained neutral on the issue, but a year later, Keon said there may have been wisdom in the earliest
proposals to fill the inlet. He said he respects those who think it is best to allow nature to take its course, but in
this case, filling the inlet would have been helping the beach to rebuild itself naturally, if only temporarily.
“I don’t think any of us have really appreciated the full potential impacts of this breach, in terms of economic
concerns,” Keon said this week.
Camps destroyed
For Russell Broad and a handful of other longtime camp owners on North Beach, the last year will be
remembered as the annus horribilis. Broad, whose family owned the camp Driftwood near the southern
end of the First Village, felt fairly confident. Though the camp to the south, the Achilles camp, was damaged in
the April storm and torn down by its owner, the Cape Cod National Seashore, Driftwood was surrounded by
high dunes to the south and east. Broad went on a vacation to see his children and grandchildren, “and when
we came back a month later, I could see the open ocean from my kitchen, and I knew we were gonzo,” he said.
By November, it was already a difficult time for Broad and his family. His mother had recently passed away
and he was in the process of selling her home in Orleans. On Nov. 4, the real estate agent telephoned him with
good news and bad: the sale had gone through, and driftwood had been destroyed.
After that, the camps began to succumb in rapid succession from south to north. The Harriss camp washed
away on Dec. 27 in the remnants of Hurricane Noel; the Truelove camp was undermined by erosion and torn
down on Jan. 16; and the Batty camp washed away in a snowstorm on Jan. 28, coming to rest on the inside of
North Beach Island. Backlash, the Eldredge family camp, was torn down on Feb. 8, and the Fuller, Shea, Kelley
and Thayer camps were moved north to the Hammatt property in the month of March (see related story, page 9).
Camp owners tended to their camps like terminally ill relatives. Having made final arrangements, owners
held fast to mementos salvaged from the camps and waited for the end to come, either by nature or by
professional demolition. Their grief was largely private, marking a chapter in their lives that included weddings,
annual get-togethers, holiday dinners and precious time with children and grandchildren.
“We had 61 wonderful years,” Broad said.
Birds v. beachgoers
At the time the inlet was formed, Chatham and Orleans town officials has recently completed an
intermunicipal agreement designed to allow off-road vehicle access to the beach while protecting nesting
shorebirds. The lengthy—and sometimes testy—discussion between the towns yielded a careful beach
management plan which was immediately complicated by the breach, which arrived at about the same time as
the shorebirds.
Under the leadership of Police Chief Mark Pawlina, Chatham instituted a combination shorebird monitor-
beach patrol on the new North Beach Island, while continuing to patrol the First Village by pickup truck. The
shorebird season, and the subsequent summer visitor season, happened without serious incident, despite the
new geographic challenge.
Massachusetts Beach Buggy Association (MBBA) member Ed Cully of Orleans, who is the group’s Nauset
Beach representative, recalls the dismay that many off-road vehicle users felt when they could no longer access
the southern tip of the beach, south of the Second Village. But there was also frustration that the washover ever
took hold, Cully said.
“Years ago we went out there, the MBBA, and put up snow fence and Christmas trees,” he said. But more
recently, the practice was outlawed because it inhibits the movement of piping plovers and other shorebirds
across the beach, and the fences and the trees had to be removed. If they’d been allowed to stay, “I don’t think
the breach would’ve happened,” Cully said.
Like many other ORV users, Cully said that visiting the barrier beach has been a way of life. “I’ve been
going out there since 1960, fishing on the beach. It’s been a family tradition. My father did it, and I continue to
do it,” he said. The MBBA takes pride in encouraging the gentle use of the beach by off-road vehicle users, and
is holding its annual beach clean-up day on Nauset Beach on Sunday, May 4.
Broad agrees that, had the MBBA’s snow fencing been allowed to remain, the break would not have
happened.
“That was a huge, horrendous mistake, but birds come before people,” Broad said.
Going forward
Aside from the ultimate uncertainty—that is, the future erosion or accretion of the beach—many questions
remain. For beach managers, it is difficult to predict how many ORV users will still travel to Chatham’s
remaining stretch of North Beach, which is shrinking on a daily basis. With Orleans’ decision to unilaterally
pursue a permit to allow ORV access during shorebird season, the issue is even more complicated.
“It’s going to be an interesting summer,” Cully said. “I’m not sure how many stickers people are going to
buy.” It may be that only the true die-hard ORV users, like Cully himself, will take the gamble of purchasing a
pricy sticker with little guarantee that the beach will be open for more than a few weeks.
Chatham Police Lt. John Cauble said, a year after the break, police are in a much better position to patrol
the isolated North Beach Island. Now, the beach patrol person has a vehicle on the island, and arrangements
have been made for shelter in one of the camps. “I think we need to iron out the rules and regulations going
forward,” Cauble said. The Chatham Parks and Recreation Commission, which is charged with creating those
regulations, has considered setting new ones for the island, and may do so as early as next week. Cauble said
he hopes the rules are clear, enforceable, and integrate seamlessly with the current rules. They must also
expressly define a “camp owner,” he noted, since some have lost their camps, and possibly their property, in the
last year.
Still, Cauble said he anticipates no special problem with people or shorebirds on the beach this season.
“I think everyone can coexist out there pretty well this summer. They did last summer,” he said.
A number of longtime beachgoers say they are undaunted by the new break. For his part, Broad said he
plans to still visit the beach by boat this summer. He thanked town officials for allowing him to relocate his
mooring from North Beach to near Cotchpinicut Landing after the loss of his camp.
Because of the increased tidal flow in and out of Pleasant Bay, many experts have theorized that the inlet will
reduce nutrient pollution in the bay, improving water quality there. Dr. Robert Duncanson, director of Chatham’s
Health and Environment department, said it may be years before any such improvement can be quantified.
While there may be an improvement in the large areas of the bay close to the inlet, it’s not known whether there
will be any benefit to the terminal ponds and embayments like Muddy Creek and Meetinghouse Pond,
Duncanson noted.
But it may be folly to assume that the breach will ultimately be a good thing for Pleasant Bay, he said.
Officials will need to closely track the acceleration of sea level rise associated with the inlet.
“We may be looking at accelerated marsh loss,” he said. “We already know there’s a higher tidal level.” The
marshes at Strong Island and south of Minister’s Point provide important wildlife habitat and shoreline
protection, but marshes take time to adapt to changes in sea level, and can’t adapt at all if their inland migration
is blocked by man-made structures, Duncanson said.
Asked what headlines the barrier beach is likely to be making in April, 2009, Keon doesn’t hesitate.
“Chatham Harbor,” he said. “I think the crystal ball will become clearer and clearer as to what happens in the
area between the two inlets.” If, as some experts believe, a land bridge begins to form between Minister’s Point
and the “dogleg” at the northern tip of North Beach Island, that tendency will become clearer in the next year,
Keon said. “My concern is very much the navigability and the viability of the old inlet, and the new inlet,” he said.
At stake is the town’s fishing fleet, which may eventually be unable to get in and out of Aunt Lydia’s Cove.
Coastal Geologist Dr. Graham Giese of the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies said the only
guarantee in the upcoming year is change.
“The system is evolving,” he said. “A year after the initiation of this north inlet, changes are still very rapid,”
he said. “So clearly, things will be quite different as a result of the changes that are continuing, a year from now.”
|
| |
|
