The beat goes on and on and on

I could be at a loss to explain why it seemed nobody gave a shit about Plum Island until now. They took away the fire service, they took away the bus service, nobody stood up and said, "Hey, no fair!" when the state first made residents install costly new septic systems and then a few years later said those weren't good enough - no, everyone had to have municipal water and sewer.

Well now the beach is at stake. Last year, when all the water/sewer mess was coming to a close and homeowners had been assessed their $17,400 betterments, one of my neighbors said to me, "Nobody cares about Plum Island unless it's about the beach," or words to that effect. The proof is in the pudding.

More recently, someone in city government said to me, "Hey, nobody cares about Plum Island." He meant the general public, I believe, not himself.

This morning I read even more opinions and conclusions about beach erosion, sparked by a comment in the comments on a story in the Daily News. There are more differing opinions on the Internet than in the comments sections of the stories in the Daily News.

But what seemed clear was what I wrote before - dredged channels, jetties and 'groins' are a primary causes of beach erosion. And building houses on/in the dunes doesn't help preserve dunes.

What surprised me - not sure why - is that nearly everyone agrees that the Army Corps of Engineers had a big hand in what is happening on beaches.

Unfortunately, engineering principles similar to the Corps' old river control policies are still alive and well on the coastline. Coastal engineers (and regulators) consequently strive to increase rates of longshore flow along the coast (since longshore flow is the only source of sand for other beaches, according to engineering theory, it presumably follows that maintaining high rates of longshore flow is beneficial). This policy, however, causes nearshore energy to increase, which translates into higher rates of coastal erosion and general environmental degradation.

Warren Brooks, the journalist who broke the acid rain story, writes that "one of the anomalies of the environmental age is that the Corps of Engineers has become the alleged protector of wetlands when it has traditionally been one of their biggest enemies, especially tidal wetlands threatened by beach erosion...the main reason we are losing beach shoreline at such an alarming rate is not sea level rise, but the destruction of natural beach protection systems by the Corps and its multi-billion-dollar dredge lobby."

Stuart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior, writes that the Army Corps "resembles a brachiosuarus, a giant water-loving dinosaur with less brains per pound of flesh than any other vertebrate. The Corps has survived form the Jurassic Age of Engineering when dams and dredged-out channels were deemed man's greatest gifts to nature." (Source: www.erosion.com/dredging)


You can see for yourself, if you can get to the Newbury town beach with that massive pile of sand there at the center parking lot. The beach to the south of the center groin is okay, for now, while the beach immediately to the north is the one in peril.

The Basin, the water between the ocean side of the island the river side (which is where I live) is so choked with sand that soon we'll be able to walk over there. A boon to property values over here, I would imagine. A 10-minute walk instead of a 10+-minute drive to the town beach or Newburyport beach; finding a place to park, paying to park ...

And so the debate continues.