My View
By Gene Ratner
Beach implementation provides no long-term solution. It will not only be a very costly shortterm amelioration for the affected sections but, unfortunately, it will also be very, very shortsighted as to the rest of the island.

True and agreed that the project will provide some brief respite to the area that will be replenished. However, over the long term, despite the fact

that sand replenishment itself is a more thoughtful, comprehensive, and much more costly plan than the dewatering installation, it, too, will ultimately fail for exactly the same reasons.

It will ultimately wash back into the ocean.

Unfortunately, in the interim - while we wait and observe, and concerned people spend millions - everything else will be on hold and the entire coastline will remain unzippered and exposed!

The sand dunes had protected Nantucket these many years. Surging wind-driven waters were kept at bay by expansive coastal sand dunes. Storms only battered the dunes which in turn held the waters at bay. Then, between storms, natural accretion replenished the dune. The frequency of storms has increased so dramatically that all our dunes have been macerated. Our coastline is flat and unprotected. Now, minor storms can move ocean waters inward 60-to-100 feet an incident. The wind-driven surges meet no resistance, they batter the exposed coast, they take the sands into the ocean, and then the ocean waters move landward permanently.

In 1995 I flew in the construction supervisor of the Geotube project, which had been installed at Amelia Beach plantations, to the island for a meeting with the Conservation Commission. He brought with him a video of what was implemented in 1991. That installation - allowed and possible only by emergency order because its implementation was delayed, opposed and obstructed by so-called environmentalists - was immediately successful. It was a cost-effective, benign, man-made sand dune with a below grade attached erosion control device. Amelia Island Plantation to this day remains protected and without erosion - with turtles that are nesting prodigiously (the environmentalists insisted that turtle nesting would be destroyed), with golf greens that have been restored, and represent an example of what modern, cost-effective engineering can accomplish.

The Nantucket Conservation Commission in 1995, influenced then by the same Land Council opposition as we find mucking up any potential progress today, refused to entertain implementation of the Geotube. In later years - when it became apparent that the dewatering installation would not work and it faced destruction - a more proactive, open-minded Commission did give permit for an experimental Geotube, but this, too, was sidetracked by litigation filed by the Land Council.

In 1995, Atlantic City protected their casinos and boardwalk with one mile of Geotube at a cost of $500,000. The results were immediate, so they added an additional mile the following year. This installation is still working satisfactorily at this writing. There has been no flooding, and the monetary savings have been astronomical.

Yet, cowered by the prohibitions fostered on us by the Nantucket Land Council, islanders sit about complacently, while the coastline becomes a disaster area. Let us not only talk about the increasing number of houses that will topple and fall - that is but the tip of the iceberg. The land has become so flat and exposed on the coast that there certainly will be a massive breakthrough at the creek and one large chunk of Madaket will be separated from the mainland. Give thought to what will happen to Siasconset, the bluff, Tom Nevers and the sewer beds. Give thought as to what all this could do to the tax rolls and the town budget. The destruction will not be confined to a yearly small number of units dispersed over the length of the island - a number we can tolerate and absorb - but the entire coastline from Siasconset to Madaket is now vulnerable - there will be a catastrophe. Right now, on Sheep Pond alone, 18 homes with assessed valuations in the millions are having their road egress threatened because the road that the Warner houses protected rolled onto the beach in April. They could request that they be removed from the tax rolls because their houses become unsaleable, and even that small an incident could cause a ripple in tax returns.

The technology for erosion control is out there. I fought and gained permission for an erosion-control installation, but to receive that permission I was forced to agree to use a technique that is not only not cost-effective, it is totally primitive. Despite having my hands tied - for twelve years - I have remained intact and am still able to watch the neighborhood slip into the sea. Madaket Public Beach was never visible from my deck, but now I can see the lifeguards, the flat land, and the many, many houses that originally were hundreds of feet from the water that are now flirting with disaster. Homeowners, because of the Land Council, just wait for that monster storm to roll them to the beach - having no choice but to accept - stoically and passively - the slow-moving erosion which will ultimately draw them into the sea.

Get real, islanders! Beach implementation - whether it is allowed or attempted at this point in time - is trifling and inconsequential. Since beach implementation is only ameliorative, and since this particular proposal will not provide for a man-made dune to protect and to draw "a line in the sand," it will prove nothing in the short run, and do nothing over the long run. In the interim, while we bury our heads in the sands as do ostriches, the damage to the entire coast will

be allowed to become overwhelming. I

- Gene Ratner 19 Sheep Pond Road