Dramatic "Shoreline Realignment" In Store For Nantucket's Eastern Shore As Bitter Intra-Governmental Dispute Continues

Just before the Labor Day holiday, a Massachusetts Superior Court Judge allowed the Nantucket Conservation Commission to move one step closer to causing what the Town's expert calls dramatic shoreline realignment on the Island's eastern shore. What the expert calls shoreline realignment you and I would call a good piece of the Island falling into the ocean.

The Judge didn't doubt this potential effect of his decision but correctly concluded he didn't have much of a choice.

At issue is a "soft" bank stabilization project sponsored by property owners on a steep eroding coastal bank. In exchange for permission from the Nantucket Conservation Commission to construct the "soft solution", the property owners agreed to conditions established by the Conservation Commission, including having to do with the amount of sand that would be imported by the property owners to the beach annually to make up for the sand that theoretically wouldn't erode from the stabilized bank.