After watching half of their nearly $600,000 dune replenishment project wash away, Salisbury Beach residents are making their pitch to the Healey administration: Give us funding and we’ll do it again.
The Salisbury Beach Citizens for Change neighborhood group raised roughly $565,000 that brought them 14,000 tons of sand over several weeks. The project finished just three days before strong winds and coastal flooding clobbered the popular North Shore beach town.
Tom Saab, the group’s president, is pressing Gov. Maura Healey and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation to provide $375,000 in immediate funding that would allow the group to redo parts of the dunes that washed away.
“All of these property owners are on this meeting call right now wanting to hear what can we do immediately to help the situation,” Saab said during a Wednesday meeting with neighbors and local and state officials. That’s what we can do – we can do that right now.”
Roughly 150 homeowners covered the “entire sand expense” in the full-scale effort that wrapped up just last Wednesday after the town received an emergency certification and beach access permit from DCR.
That paved the way for residents to replace sand on destroyed dunes around their beachfront properties which sustained damage during an early January storm.
“I’m sure (DCR Commissioner) Brian Arrigo can make an extra effort to find these funds for us after what we just did collectively, as property owners of Salisbury Beach,” Saab said.
The issues at Salisbury Beach are not self-contained nor new, with other coastal towns and cities experiencing an increasing number of damaging events in recent months and years.
State Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, whose district includes Salisbury, called the beach an important natural resource for residents across the Bay State, not just for those who live along the beachfront.
Tarr and several members of Salisbury Beach Citizens for Change said they believe the restoration project “did its job” even with the destruction it sustained Sunday. Water levels reached a staggering 12.34 feet, according to the National Weather Service.
“It dissipated wave energy and it did prevent a lot of damage from happening,” Tarr told the Herald Wednesday evening. “But like most of the sand you put on a beach in this situation, it is sacrificial. Some of it was lost, some of it was redistributed to other places.”
A DCR spokeswoman told the Herald that the agency has closed two access points at the beach following the recent rainstorms. Staffers are also meeting with community representatives and town officials on a regular basis to monitor conditions.
Not all Salisbury residents are fully onboard with looking at strengthening dunes as a solution.
“We’re not coming up with the right answer. I feel like we’re being held in the dark about something or there’s more to the puzzle,” resident Larry Kady said. “The sand is not the only answer.”
Tarr is seeking a larger $1.5 million replenishment project that the state would pay for, elevating the dunes and resculpting them with a “more gradual slope” so they can be more resilient, he said.
The senator said he is “cautiously optimistic” about the immediate steps ahead, saying residents and local and elected officials have done all they can, and it’s up to the state to provide funding.
“It’s difficult because the state’s resources are not unlimited,” Tarr said, “and we are facing a situation of declining revenue collections and increased demand for a whole host of things that demand our attention. We have to make the case, I think we are making the case, and now it’s up to the folks that control the purse strings to respond.”
Time is of the essence, as one of the state permits obtained earlier this winter is still valid but will be expiring by the end of April, Saab said. And not much long after that, people from all over will be flocking to the beach to cool off from the summer heat.
“The citizens who are on the dunes themselves should not be the ones paying for the fight,” Salisbury Selectman Mike Colburn said. “The state of Massachusetts has a legal obligation and a moral obligation to start getting sand on this beach now.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
