$500K sand dune for protecting beach houses in US gone with the wind

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News websites
14 Mar 2024 00:19

Salisbury is known to suffer from rising sea levels, strong winds, and severe storms more recently.

This Feb. 15, 2019 photo shows a view out the window of an oceanfront condo in Salisbury, Massachusetts (AP)

Beachfront property owners in Salisbury, Massachusetts, faced a loss of over $500,000, according to The Guardian, after a sand dune was washed away only three days after being built to protect their houses from dangerous rising tides.

Made of 15,000 tons of sand, the dune was meant to keep dangerous tides from damaging beach houses after having been completed in February, but the storm that hit the area washed it all away.

The dune that was just completed in February was gone within 72 hours.

Salisbury Beach Citizens for Change, the volunteer organization behind the construction, posted on Facebook that although they were destroyed, “the sacrificial dunes did their job."

It argued that were it not for the dune, the damage would have been much more.

Salisbury is known to suffer from rising sea levels, strong winds, and severe storms, more recently, including two storms in January that swept across the area.

Digital meteorologist Jonathan Belles of the Weather Channel explained that "from nor’easters to hurricanes, Salisbury gets touched by several large storms each year."

“Their proximity to the Atlantic Ocean gives them a source of moisture and their northern latitude also firmly places them under the powerful jet stream during much of the year,” he added, noting that Salisbury “is also affected by coastal flooding pushed ashore by storms out in the Atlantic.”

Following the damage, the area's homeowners requested the state to step in and aid.

Local news outlet Fox59 relayed that Republican state senator Bruce Tarr is aiming to garner $1.5 million in state funding to reconstruct the dune.

Tarr stated, “We’re managing a natural resource that protects a lot of interests.”

He did, however, say that a permanent seawall was not an alternative since hard structures are not permitted on Massachusetts beaches.