Final installment: Bob Gould's coverage of erosion 32 years ago

I said I would continue my series on the 1970s erosion and then I didn't so ... there are 2 more stories that Bob Gould gave me, but I find that I'm missing the second page of one of them!

The third story, from Feb. 10, 1976, has 3 maps depicting how much the high water contours of PI changed from 1827 to 1851 to 1890.

"Whereas a century ago, Plum Island could shift its position by half a mile and it made little difference, the development of the Island has changed all that," Gould writes.

He goes on to talk of what the island was like when Henry David Thoreau walked its length in 1844 and how Thoreau described it as a "desert of drifting sand," with "but a half dozen houses on it ... as trackless as Sahara."

Then Gould talks of suggestions being bandied about that the federal government buy the homes and property on the island, "let residents stay in their houses, but then let nature take its course - and be ready to help homeowners when their cottages inevitably topple into the surf."

"Or is there something more active which could be done?"

A seawall, dredging from offshore (there was already a moratorium on that at this point) ... but in order for the Army Corps of Engineers to move in and study how to retard erosion on Plum Island, Gould notes, "the area to be studied would have to be turned over to the federal, state or local government, so that public funds would not be used on private property;" Congress would have to approve the funds for a study; a 3-5 year study would have to be undertaken; and pecuniary benefits (to the general public) would have to be demonstrated - "and the Corps is apt to look with a jaundiced eye at Plum Island's traffic flow and parking facilities."

Thomas Bruha, Chief of the Corps' New England beach erosion section, is quoted as saying, "the study of erosion is not an exact science. You can get an historical pattern and then get something like the February, 1972, storm, or the 1969 storm, and it might change anything. They were unusual ones."

Back in 1976, the erosion was worst about 300 yards south of Island center. Bruha said the Island's changes are "irregular, erratic and sporadic." He also said he was sure there was another solution to sand bags.

On to Feb. 20, 1976, and a story (the one with the missing page) with the head "Sandbag wall falls to tidal barrage ..." High tides between a Tuesday and a Thursday had washed away not only nearly all of a 600-ft. sandbag that the National Guard and volunteers had erected, but also two cement block walls that had been erected the previous winter were destroyed.

"Yesterday," Gould writes, "some residents were having boulders brought from the Newbury town dump to attempt creating a barrier leading from a groin to the barrier dune, in hopes sand will will build up around the new wall."

Of course, since these stories were written, Plum Island has been built up even more. So ... everyone ignored history, ignored these events and failed measures, and went ahead and let people build and build and build. And it continues to this day.

Given all this, and I'm sure there's more sitting in some archive somewhere, whose responsibility is it that homes are in jeopardy again, 32 years later?

Many thanks to Bob Gould for sharing this historical information with me so I could share it with you.