The homeowner may have won the first round, but as the years went on, he and his neighbors became increasingly frustrated that they hadn’t received approval to expand the project. Opponents of the project said they have photos proving that Geotubes are causing erosion on other Nantucket beaches, despite the sacrificial sand. You countered that there was no erosion on either end of the beach or on the beach in front of it, but wasn’t that evidence of a successful strategy?
Both sides accused the other of taking the best of the data.
“We had a great run here,” said Posner. I went out with him to the edge of the tidy garden, took in his heart-stopping view, and looked back at his cottage. “It would be terrible if I really got swept away, but I don’t feel bad. The reason I can’t sleep at night isn’t losing my house. It’s giving in to pointless nonsense. It underscores an effective and balanced way to adapt to climate change without harming others that many coastal communities can learn from.”
In 2020, homeowners groups decided to stop adding sacrificial sand. Posner said it doesn’t make sense to keep spending $2 million a year on a project that won’t scale. “We told the town, ‘We’re done. We can’t afford to keep up with the permits.’ And the town came to us and said, ‘Don’t give up. I plan to hire him, and if your project is successful, we’ll work together as partners on this path.”
About a year ago, Arcadis, an environmental company hired by the town, issued a reportmore than 50 pages weighing the costs and benefits of all sorts of options: keeping tubes, removing tubes, extending tubes, beach nutrients, vegetation, etc. It’s a very real impact of climate change. It is a remarkable document that reads like a mediation agreement between divorcing couples, trying to break up what has become a bitter battle over how to deal with .
In short, it essentially states that maintaining the tubes, albeit temporary, may be the least expensive strategy, but if the community disagrees with it, it could lead to catastrophic coastal erosion. face.
Journalist Cohan said, “It’s come down to this strange battle between people who want to sit on the edge of the world and save their homes, and people who think they shouldn’t be allowed to do so.” said. , Wrote about community hardships at Vanity Fair in 2013He and his wife, book editor Deborah Futter, bought a shingle-style house in 2009 for $600,000, which he said was a robbery and incredibly dangerous. rice field. ). They are now resigned to losing it altogether.