"What?" she said

I really was planning on taking the weekend off from posting, but something happened yesterday afternoon that I really have to talk about.

I was telling members of my family about the PI beach and how they are going to put sand at a cost of $2m on the beach from the dredging, when my sister Sarah asked who was paying for the sand to be put on the beach.

Well, I said, it's a 75-25 matching grant between the state and the two communities who will get the sand - Newbury and Salisbury.

She was not pleased that taxpayer money was being used.

You see, she and my brother-in-law go down to the Outer Banks (NC) every year and see the same failed efforts there, to 'save' Hatteras Island.

I won't bore you (right now) with even more details, but those sand bags on the Newbury beach have been exposed twice now. I know the Army Corps of Engineers plans to change slopes and whatnot on the beach when/if the sand is placed there, but I foresee that sand washing away as soon as there's one significant storm.

Maybe two, if we're lucky.

Read this June 26, 2009, story from the Cape Cod Times.

"The story's over," Keon said.

Ted Keon is Chatham's director of coastal resources. He was talking about the summer camps that were washed away on Chatham's "North Village" area during that lastest storm that exposed the sandbags on the PI beach.