The CONSEQUENCES ofTHE CUT
Smith's Point breach poses potential navigational, environmental problems
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Esther Island is likely to remain disconnected from Nantucket for quite some time because of strong tidal forces scouring out an old wound in this narrow section of Smith's Point.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent The new Smith's Point is now the sand spit on the left. The Patriot's Day storm chopped a hole in this beach re-establishing Esther Island, the new east end of which is at middle right. Below that is the peninsula and inlet formed when Hurricane Esther formed this little island in September 1961.

Heavy winds and high seas ripped through Smith's Point during last week's storm, separating yet again the western-most tip of Nantucket from the rest of the island.

It remains to be seen what the environmental impacts of the new inlet between New Smith's Point and Esther Island will be, but Town Biologist Keith Conant offered some predictions, based on the aftereffects of Hurricane Esther in September, 1961.

"All of those flats that are out and around Smith's Point and Esther Island to Eel Point; a lot of that could get excavated," said Conant. "Potentially, you could lose some eelgrass beds from excavation, but that would probably increase depth over time and increase habitat. I believe it would re-grow eelgrass because of the conditions that already exist in Madaket Harbor."

Conant said that another fallout of Hurricane Esther, the filling in of Madaket Harbor with sand and the smothering of eelgrass beds that created the flats that the new cut could excavate, could also happen if northeast winds and astronomical high tides persist.

"I think the area is very dynamic and can change, so habitat can be restored as long as it's deep enough," he said. "If there's greater depth, that's better for scallops, better for juvenile fish because you get more eelgrass and more habitat."

With the channel between the ocean and Madaket Harbor now 15- feet deep and approximately 200- feet-wide remaining open, new coastal and navigational dynamics are already in motion.

Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto said that as of Monday, the cut remains unsafe for boat travel between the harbor and the ocean.

"We're going to let it stabilize," Fronzuto said. "We don't know at this time; it's a dangerous situation. We do not recommend people use the cut. There's been at least one drowning in situations like this."

With breaking water and strong wave action in the new channel right now, Fronzuto likened the water conditions in the inlet to the opening in September 1961, when Hurricane Esther cleaved Smith's Point in half, creating Esther Island and causing the drowning he spoke of.

Should this new channel become deep enough and wide enough with calmer waters before the summer boating season, Fronzuto said he would consider marking it appropriately with navigational buoys.

Peter Rosen, the chairman of the department of Earth and Environmental Science at Northeastern University has been studying Nantucket's coastal geology for more than 20 years. He says the breach that occurred in Madaket last week is part of an eons-long process of erosion and accretion that has happened several times in this same spot.

"This is extremely natural," he said after viewing aerial photos. "This is how inlets open. There is a tidal channel that goes right to the spot of the opening in the harbor, which suggests that this is the site of a previous opening."

After looking at historical maps and photos of this part of Smith's Point, Rosen said he believes there was an inlet there sometime between 1978 and 1982, and that the inlet previously existed at two different intervals between 1844 and 1890.

"That water wants to go there," said Rosen of what he saw as a deep new channel that unlike the breach of Nauset Beach last week, which is nearly closed again, will stay open a lot longer. "It's the one place that keeps opening repeatedly, so it seems to be an area that, were it not for the extreme long shore drift, would stay open because it looks like the tidal hydraulics are such that the water wants to go through. It is a place that's been open for many years in the past and presently is very deep; it has the potential for staying open for a substantial amount of time."

This latest breach through a barrier beach is not the first in the geological history of the island. Seventeen years after Hurricane Esther added another layer of privacy to three cottage owners on Smith's Point, the Blizzard of 1978, that crippled the mainland, was a raging nor'easter on Nantucket that plowed into the ocean end of Smith's Point, separating it from Clark's Cove. Another nor'easter, this one in April 1984 that toppled the Great Point Lighthouse, blasted through the Galls near Great Point, forming a channel that fishing boats were seen steaming through. That channel closed in time for summer.

One of the more famous barrier beach cuts occurred during a December 1896 nor'easter when ocean waves easily broke through the Haulover, a deep path in the sand in the narrowest part of the beach that fishermen used to haul their boats between the ocean and the Head of the Harbor instead of going around Great Point. The cut remained open for 12 years as it gradually migrated northward, closing when it reached the clay and gravelly soils of the Coskata Woods and forming

Haulover Pond. I