A $500,000 sand dune collapsed in days after being erected, and residents are looking for help to protect their homes
On the border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts – about 35 miles north of Boston – is Salisbury, a coastal town and popular summer destination for tourists. But for those who live in the town year round, especially those who live on the coastline, life’s not a beach.
Last month, after a series of storms battered the area, local citizens came together to take the necessary steps to protect their homes. Volunteer organization Salisbury Beach Citizens for Change raised more than $500,000 to erect a 15,000-ton sand dune – a formidable barrier that would hopefully protect at least 15 beach houses from destruction.
Or so they thought. The sand dune was completed after one month in early March, but just three days later, the dune – and nearly half a million dollars – was wiped away.
The tragic incident made the project a laughingstock to some and angered others.
It’s possible to restore degraded coastal dune systems (basically sand + grass) by human intervention, but it takes a lot more work and time than just putting down a pile of sand. And the newly restored dunes also need restricted access, or they would just degrade very fast again. Properly creating dunes would also mean that these houses would lose their direct seaview (or be demolished if they are in the way), so it’s probably not even an acceptable solution to these rich twats.
In Belgium and northern France there has been a successful 15y project to restore hundreds of hectares of dunes. The budget was about 8m euros, so for the amount of coastline that these dunes protect, it was actually quite cheap.
https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/life/publicWebsite/project/LIFE12-NAT-BE-000631/flemish-and-north-french-dunes-restoration
This is America, of a corporation can’t profit from it, no one will bother until some rich asshole’s property is directly threatened.