Excerpt:
A Massachusetts beach community is scrambling after a weekend storm washed away $600,000 in sand that was trucked in to protect homes, roads and other infrastructure.
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Lola Fadulu – the New York Times (03-15-2024):
Beach Town Residents Paid $600,000 for Sand. It Lasted a Few Days
Excerpt:
Residents who live on Salisbury Beach, a seaside community in northern Massachusetts, paid for the sand dunes to protect their beachfront homes from storms. Then a storm came.
The owners of beachfront homes in the seaside community of Salisbury Beach in northern Massachusetts spent nearly $600,000 to have around 15,000 tons of sand dropped near their properties to protect themselves from future storms.
But the Atlantic Ocean had something else coming. The high tide and winds that pounded the area on Sunday washed nearly half of the sand away, mere days after it was placed…
“People are depressed, discouraged, angry,” said Tom Saab, the president of Salisbury Beach Citizens for Change, a group representing property owners that spearheaded the sand project. “The dunes did their job. They sacrificed themselves to protect the properties — no properties were really damaged.”
Then the nor’easter landed and took 50 percent of the sand and an estimated $300,000 worth of work, according to the group…
About half of Salisbury Beach properties have been owned by the same families since the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, and those owners are loath to renounce their ocean views, Mr. Saab said.
“Nobody wants to give up,” he said. “I will never give up on protecting Salisbury Beach.”
Ava Berger – the Boston Globe via MSN (03-14-2024):
Coastal flooding washes away half of $600,000 effort, paid for by property owners…
Excerpt:
Salisbury residents are appealing to the state for help after flooding washed away approximately 7,500 tons of sand from Salisbury Beach over the weekend, destroying half of a $600,000 dune restoration project paid for by property owners.
“$300,000 of people’s hard-earned personal funds washed into the Atlantic,” said Tom Saab, president of Salisbury Beach Citizens for Change, a nonprofit that raised the money for the project.
About 150 property owners along a stretch of the popular state-owned beach paid to have 15,000 tons of sand trucked in to fortify dunes that buffer houses from the ocean — but most of it was wiped out three days later…
Back-to-back storms in January washed away much of the dunes, leaving homes weak and vulnerable. Residents scrambled to raise money to truck in sand and rebuild them…
But state environmental officials have said sand harvesting “would be damaging to the environment if we harvest the sand from dead low tide,” he said. “We’re not talking about digging six feet down, we’re talking about one foot deep.”
Salisbury Beach property owners have made multiple recent appeals to the state for assistance in recent years…
A DCR spokesperson noted that while access points to the beach, and the shoreline, are owned by the state, the area in front of the properties is privately owned…
WCVB Channel 5 Boston (03-10-2024):
‘Catastrophic’: Sand dune made to protect beachfront homes in Mass. washes away in 3 days
Homeowners invested more than $500,000 to bring in 14,000 tons of sand to protect their properties, but the barrier is now gone.
CBS (03-11-2024):
Salisbury Beach residents call on state to help protect their homes
Weekend high tides washed the sand away, leaving the coastline vulnerable to more flooding. WBZ-TV’s Christina Hager reports.
NBC (03-13-2024):
Salisbury Beach residents seek help to protect their homes
Homeowners spoke up at a community meeting about beach erosion concerns.
