PLUM ISLAND — It was one of the region's biggest news stories for more than four years, but the dire TV broadcasts of destruction at the island's ocean-battered beach center have vanished of late.
That's good news for Plum Islanders.
More than a year after millions of dollars were spent to dump 150,000 cubic yards on the fast-eroding beach, observers say it's clear that the effort has been a success — or at the very least, it bought the beach some much-needed time.
"It seems to be rather stable down there, but I do keep my fingers crossed," said Doug Packer, Newbury's conservation agent and the leading local authority on the beach erosion problem. "Without that (beach renourishment), we wouldn't have had much time left."
Plum Island Center was the hot spot for local beach erosion. More than 100 feet of beach and dune was estimated to have been eaten away over the course of a decade or so, threatening several homes and a vital section of Northern Boulevard, the main thoroughfare that connects about half of the island's 1,200 homes to the mainland. Also imperiled were the island's new water and sewer lines, which run under the boulevard.
The sand-replenishment project focused mainly on the area extending northward from a man-made stone "groin" at the beach center, where currents, tides and wave action had scoured out the beach and destroyed the protective dunes.
A year ago, it appeared that the newly dumped sand was eroding fast. It was estimated that about a third of the dumped sand was gone. But the situation appears to have stabilized.
Packer estimates that perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 cubic yards has migrated off the beach, but it is still in the beach center's "littoral drift" area — meaning it is offshore and will perhaps be pushed back onto the beach under the right conditions.
Vincent Russo, a Plum Island resident and former Newbury selectman who has walked the beach for years, is encouraged by what he has seen.
"I think most of the sand has held up," he said. "All of the work they put into it a year and a half ago wasn't wasted."
Russo noted that although there is clear evidence of some erosion in the beach center, the beach appears to have grown significantly a few hundred yards to the north in the area of 80 Northern Blvd. It's an area that had been considered endangered before the project.
Another sign of stability is the rebuilding of two homes that had been torn down due to severe erosion problems. The state recently approved a permit for Gerri Buzzotta to rebuild her beach center home. Another home a couple hundred yards to the south on Annapolis Way is also being rebuilt. Packer noted that both houses previously sat on standard foundations, but the new structures will be built on pilings, which is considered to be a safer and smarter way to build homes on beachfronts.
Attention has now shifted to the repair of the stone jetties at the mouth of the Merrimack River, about two miles north of the Beach Center.
The century-old structures were built to prevent the location of the river mouth from shifting as it has in the distant past. But the unnatural stone obstructions have also interfered with the normal flow of sand along the coast. Adding to that is their deteriorated condition: They have partially sunk, and stones have been pushed off the top in storms, which has allowed strong currents to flow over the jetties. It is believed by many that these currents have caused much of the erosion on the beach.
Packer said the jetties have sunk anywhere from 4 to 6 feet from their designed height. They need to be restored to their full height, and the program of dredging sand from the mouth of the river and depositing it near the beaches needs to be done on a regular basis in order to renourish the beach and mimic the natural pattern of sand movement, he said.
Dredging and offshore sand dumping — which costs only a fraction of the $5.1 million spent last year on pumping sand directly onto the beach — had been done about every three years, but it was halted in the late 1990s. During the ensuing years, erosion problems blossomed in the Beach Center.
Russo said he's hopeful that an idea recently proposed by Ron Barrett, president of Plum Island Taxpayers and Associates, will provide the fix for the jetty at a reduced cost. Barrett wants to use enormous stones excavated during the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant to repair the jetties. The stones are piled on the plant's property in Seabrook.
"The stones there are free, and the shipping charges would be less," Russo said, adding that he thinks up to $1.5 million could be shaved off the estimated $5 million cost.
Meanwhile, Packer said a much larger-scale study is being done to better understand the sand migration patterns along the full length of the region's beaches, an area that extends from Boar's Head in Hampton, N.H., to Gloucester. A better understanding of the patterns could lead to better, and more cost-effective, management of beach erosion.
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