Duxbury Seawall Repairs To Be Voted On At 3/9 Town Meeting

Duxbury has a town meeting scheduled for March 9th. Among the topics being voted on are seawall repair funding. The original seawall went up in the 1950s. I grew up in the beach neighborhood, and have witnessed the deterioration of the seawall 

Duxbury has slacked on seawall maintenance, and the chickens came home to roost about a year ago this week. A nor'easter smashed large sections of the wall into the sea. While the storm was powerful, the collapse was more attrition than anything else.

Since that storm, Duxbury has only performed emergency repairs to the wall. Estimated costs for repairs are in the $5 million range, while a replacement might run four times that.

Funding is available, as the town is sitting on a million dollar state grant and two million in low interest loan financing. FEMA will cover 75% of replacement costs.

Duxbury Beach has perhaps the worst coastal flooding situation in Massachusetts. It is a narrow strip of sand set between a bay and the ocean. It breaches frequently where dunes are the only protection, and requires constant restoration. During storms, much of it is inundated.

Without the sand repletion, the entire beach would wash over. It may take a generation, or it could happen with one big storm. It can and will go from being a barrier beach to a sand bar very quickly if it is not maintained. The Powder Point Bridge will become a pier sticking out into open ocean.

Duxbury fares better where the seawall is. This present seawall, shoddily constructed without rebar technology that was used in Constantinople, survived the Blizzard of '78, the Perfect Storm, several hurricanes and an annual parade of nor'easters and gales without any maintenance at all.

Duxbury Beach is a barrier beach. It not only houses residents, it protects the sheltered cove of Duxbury from direct ocean surf. The seawall protects not only the beach residents, but the whole town.

Duxbury has a lot of expensive real estate fronting Duxbury Bay. They currently don't get direct ocean surf.

If the seawall is left to fall into the sea, the north end of the beach is unprotected. If that end of the beach washes away, you can't do customary repairs on the south end of the beach, as the convoys of replacement sand trucks can't go over the Powder Point Bridge (nor can emergency vehicles). Beach erosion would spiral out of control.

Thus are barrier beaches lost.

In the long run, it is better to spend a little now than a lot later. Duxbury can laugh off the loss of 200 beach houses, although that laugh will cost about $2 million a year in lost tax revenue.

What they can't laugh off is direct ocean surf hitting the Powder Point, Washington Street and Standish Shores neighborhoods. That scene in the picture above with the waves hitting the houses could be happening to the King Caesar House.

Those are the stakes if the barrier beach is compromised. The whole Alden school complex would also be threatened. Potential losses are incalculable.

You either maintain the seawall on a straight-line barrier beach, or you have to build one, one millionaire yard at a time, along every nook and cranny of Duxbury's present bayfront shoreline. The third choice is "Duxbury gradually erodes into the sea." There is no fourth choice.

Vote to protect Duxbury with a seawall.

Protect Duxbury, Repair The Seawall

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.

Is A Dune As Good As A Seawall?

People who propose a strategy of not making seawall repairs need to take a good look at the picture above.

That is the former dune that was charged with protecting the parking lot at Duxbury Beach Park. The picture was taken shortly after the Blizzard of '78.

It was annihilated by the Blizzard, which had the strength of a weak hurricane. I lived there at the time, and these pictures have not been altered.

The same Blizzard didn't put a scratch on the seawall that stood 100 yards north. That seawall, shoddily built and not maintained at all, made it 40 more years and still stands today.

That dune not only protects the parking lot, it protects mainland Duxbury. As you can see, it doesn't do much protecting when a big storm comes around.

The picture below is taken from about the same vantage point. It shows what gets hit by waves once the dune is gone, with "what gets hit" meaning "Powder Point."

Much of Duxbury Beach is protected by dunes. A good portion of the spring season is spent restoring those dunes after the ocean has at them with winter storms.

Duxbury is protected by two barrier beaches. One is Duxbury Beach, and the other is Cape Cod. The protection from Cape Cod ends right about where those pictures were taken. North of that, Duxbury is hit by direct open-ocean waves.

The part of Duxbury Beach that has a seawall is the part if Duxbury Beach that needs a seawall. The seawall protects not only the Gurnet Road area, but the Powder Point area. It is also what stands between the sea and the school complex.

Dunes won't get the job done. They get leveled, and become a rapidly eroding sandbar. There is nothing to stop the waves at that point.

As you can see, those waves will hit either Duxbury Beach or Powder Point. You can decide which at the next town election.