Beach Residents Spent $500K on Barrier. It Lasted 3 Days

Perhaps not the best investment that residents of Salisbury, Massachusetts, have ever made
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 11, 2024 11:28 AM CDT
Updated Mar 16, 2024 2:10 PM CDT
$500K, 14K-Ton Sand Dune Held Out 3 Days
That's 14,000 tons of sand washed away in three days.   (WCVB)

If you're the owner of a pricey beachfront home that keeps being threatened by violent storms and high tides, you might want to protect your investment. So went the thinking of residents of Salisbury, Massachusetts, who WCVB reports were hit by two big storms and a lot of erosion in January that encroached on their homes. As the Newburyport Daily News reports, the Salisbury Beach Citizens for Change, faced with no immediate promises from local or state officials, filed an emergency action in January allowing them to put up a new barrier dune, which they did—to the tune of $500,000 out of their pockets and 14,000 tons of sand. That work was to be completed Friday. But some 72 hours later, all that sand was washed away.

"We got hit with three storms—two in January, one now—at the highest astronomical tides possible," project overseer Rick Rigoli tells WCVB. So where to go from here? It's really not clear. Homeowner Ron Guilmette calls the situation "catastrophic" and doesn't know whether to unload his property, much less what it's now worth. "I don't know what the solution is," he says. (More erosion stories.)

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