Nantucket Weighs New Beach Erosion Plan

By Jason Graziadei
I&M Senior Writer

Josh Posner readily acknowledges the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund’s bruised public image.

Yet three years after the group's massive $23 million beach-nourishment project was rejected by island residents and ultimately withdrawn by the nonprofit group, the SBPF was back before the Conservation Commission yesterday with a new, scaled-back plan to stabilize the Sconset bluff and protect the homes along Baxter Road from erosion.

Posner, the group's treasurer, said the new coastal-engineering project featuring so-called marine mattresses and stone-filled gabion baskets is smaller, cheaper and something he hopes will be palatable to island residents who vigorously objected to the beach-nourishment effort in 2008.

"I hope they'll view it as something that stands on its own, but we'd all be naive if we didn't understand that we dug a very big reputational and political hole for ourselves," Posner said. "And that means people will look that much more carefully and skeptically at anything we propose. We're well aware of it."

The Conservation Commission got its first look at the SBPF’s new project on Wednesday during the first hearing on its notice of intent that was filed with the agency back in May. The proposal calls for the marine mattresses and gabion baskets to be installed within a 2,600-foot, publicly-owned section of the coastal bank stretching from 99 Baxter Road to 55 Baxter Road.

The initial $2.6 million needed to get the project underway will be privately funded by members of the nonprofit group, which believes it will be secure, environmentally sensitive, and is the best hope for a long-term solution for Baxter Road property owners. The group also intends to establish an escrow fund to cover the costs of removing the structures if necessary.

The plan includes the placement of geogrid-mesh containers known as marine mattresses filled with angular stones along the face of the coastal bank, with four-foot tall gabion baskets, also filled with large stones, placed at the toe of the bluff, all of which would be covered with sacrificial sand. There are 20 properties within the project area, but only six would receive the added protection in the initial phase of the project.

"We can try this on a small scale and see how it works. It's very much a pilot project," Posner said. "It's a very different proposal (from the beach-nourishment project). It's much smaller and I think some people certainly still have the question as to whether it will work or not."

Coastal erosion along the Sconset bluff has forced five Baxter Road property owners to relocate their homes in recent years, and also prompted the Sconset Trust to spend $3 million to move the Sankaty Head Lighthouse 400 feet northwest to a safer, more stable location. Another eight residences have been propped up and moved to the edge of Baxter Road, as far away from the bluff as possible. Posner said a home he considered to be a $3 million property recently sold for $600,000 due to the erosion factor.

The SBPF, which formed in 1992, has launched several erosion-control projects since its inception, including a dewatering project that was recently decommissioned.

Since first unveiling the new coastal-engineering project in late 2010, Posner said the SBPF has contacted as many as 50 community leaders and island residents in an outreach effort to get feedback and answer questions before heading to the Conservation Commission. Among those who were contacted by the nonprofit group were selectman and charter-boat captain Bob DeCosta, another charter-boat captain, Pete Kaizer, as well as D. Anne Atherton, who were all involved in the Coalition for Responsible Coastal Management. The group opposed the beach-nourishment plan in 2008, believing it would have caused irreparable damage to the fishery off the bluff.

"We went right to the people who had been the most active," Posner said.

DeCosta and Atherton did not return phone calls seeking comment.

It is unclear exactly how the SBPF's new plan will comply with the existing moratorium on coastal-erosion projects on town-owned property. The petition that implemented the moratorium, proposed by another SBPF critic, town clerk Catherine Flanagan Stover, was prompted by the beach-nourishment proposal and overwhelmingly approved by voters. Flanagan Stover successfully secured an extension of the moratorium through 2013.