26 March 2024

A decades-old downside grew to become acute his winter. After excessive winds and a historic excessive tide broken 20+ beachfront houses in January at Salisbury Seashore, Massachusetts, the residents took up a set to construct a protecting dune. It took 5 weeks, 14,000 tons of sand and greater than half 1,000,000 {dollars} to construct the dune to guard the houses. Three days later it was gone.

Completion of the dune mission in early March introduced excessive hopes to Salisbury Seashore.

However within the subsequent three days a pure prevalence, an astronomical excessive tide, washed all of it away.

The short-term dune did it’s job — no houses have been broken in March — however the thought of spending half million {dollars} after each storm is out of the query. So the city is regrouping and weighing choices.

You is likely to be questioning: Why don’t they only construct a seawall?

Seawalls simply transfer the issue a couple of hundred ft down the seaside so they’re typically not allowed in Massachusetts (see particular exception in yellow).

Additionally, a seawall will take away the seaside solely as proven on this diagram. If Salisbury Seashore builds a seawall they’ll don’t have any seaside in any respect, only a wall with a sheer drop to the ocean. Understandably, the householders desire a seaside.

The ocean takes land slowly … after which suddenly. No amount of cash can cease it.

(credit are within the captions)