Duxbury goes to vote Thursday on a tone-setting matter of seawall repairs.
Duxbury Beach's seawall is in dire need of major repairs. Multiple sections of it either collapsed or crumbled away after a series of March nor'easters laid into it, and it will not stand much longer if repairs are forsaken.
The seawall is of critical importance to the town. Duxbury Beach is a barrier beach. It stands between Duxbury's present mainland and the ravages of the sea. It is hit by the heaviest surf on Duxbury Beach (north of the tip of the barrier beach that is Cape Cod), in an area where a dune would be washed away.
It provides direct protection for 190 houses who pay $2 million a year in taxes. Indirectly, it protects the wealthiest neighborhoods in Duxbury from ocean surf. Those neighborhoods- Powder Point, Standish Shore, Washington Street- pay an almost incalcuable amount of taxes... and that's before we add in the school complex off of Saint George Street, including the new $128 million high school.
If you attend the Thanksgiving game at Duxbury this year, walk behind the visitor bleachers and look across the marsh. Those houses that you see on the other side of the marsh are the same ones that you saw getting hit with Hawaii 5-0 waves on the news last March.
There, but for a wall, goes Thee.
 |
| No rebar there, citizens... |
Duxbury put the finishing touches on the present seawall in 1954. It was of shoddy construction, lacking rebar or revetments and having no maintenance performed for almost 65 years.
This wall was able to stay up through the Blizzard of '78, the Perfect Storm, the April Fools storm and scores of other nor'easters. These storms leveled miles of dunes, but the wall stayed up. It fell more to attrition than to a major storm, as last March's entertainment was not on the level of the 1978 or 1991 storms.
This seawall even has a hand in replenishing the dunes. Sand that would normally wash into the marsh (scientists who study storms of prehistory use a tube to pull mud out of the marsh, look for layers of sand in it, and judge the storm's intensity by how much sand was moved into the marsh by storms) is instead washed southward along the wall towards the dunes.
Without this sand, the beach and the dunes would erode. Sandwich is losing yards of beach each winter to this.
Without the wall, that sand ends up filling in the marsh. The mud flats one can see on Duxbury Beach today are the former marsh from thousands of years ago when the Ice Age ended and the beach was further east. The destruction of the estuary and the shellfish industry would be back-breakers for the town.
Without replenishing sand, the beach erodes into a sanbar. Waves then start breaking on Powder Point houses, and the bridge becomes a pier that ends in the open Atlantic.
 |
| That's how much wiggle room you have between the status quo and waves breaking on Powder Point houses. |
The wall also protects Gurnet Road. Gurnet Road is essential to the rest of the beach. Ambulances, fire trucks, 18 wheelers and DPW vehicles are too heavy for the Powder Point Bridge, and can only reach Duxbury Beach by using Gurnet Road. If the road is washed out, both Duxbury Beach Park and the resident parking lot would become inoperable. Gurnet Point/Saquish Neck would also be inaccessible from the mainland.
When repairs close the Powder Point Bridge, the only way that Duxbury residents can use the beach is A) a Normandy-style amphibious assault or B) Gurnet Road.
It goes without saying that the convoy of trucks needed to replenish the dunes of Duxbury Beach need to use Gurnet Road. Without these trucks, the dunes would be left flattened and breaches could not be repaired.
 |
| How dunes fare at the northern end of Duxbury Beach... |
These nightmare scenarios can be avoided with a strong seawall. They are not far-flung scare tactics, they are potential outcomes that must be examined before making a financial decision.
The money is out there. Towns like Scituate and Marshfield have banked millions of FEMA (FEMA pays 75% of seawall repairs) dollars. They have people writing grant requests. Duxbury hasn't applied for the grants, has pocketed no FEMA money and now has the most vulnerable seawall in Massachusetts.
This article is not yelling "FIRE!" in a theater, it is just pointing out the damage that a fire could do, even as some people in town try to nail the theater doors shut.
Don't listen to these fools. The wall won't be cheap, but the cost will be far less than the costs of ignoring the problem until the waves start breaking on Powder Point.
Do whatever it takes to keep these walls up. Protect Duxbury Beach = Protect Duxbury.
No comments:
Post a Comment