Welcome news arrived this week that will go a long way toward fixing a big part of what ails Plum Island.
The Army Corps of Engineers has set aside $3.5 million for emergency repairs to the island's south jetty, the half-mile-long granite jetty that has contributed to erosion on the island. The money will be used to rebuild the slumping jetty to its designed height, which will prevent currents from washing through its breached sections.
Those currents that wash through the jetty are believed to be responsible for severe erosion along Plum Island beach, erosion that got so bad in the past few years that it imperiled 26 homes, as well as the island's main road, sewer line and water line. A $5.1 million project last year to dredge sand from the river channel and pump it directly onto the beach saved that vulnerable area for now.
But the repair of the jetty is the longer-term solution.
The jetties are both the savior and the bane of Plum Island. The south jetty, along with its Salisbury Beach twin known as the north jetty, were built in the 1800s in an attempt to prevent dramatic shifts in the location of the mouth of the Merrimack River. They are massive stone walls that channel the flow of the river and prevent sand from clogging up the funnel-like effect that occurs where the river meets the sea. They have largely succeeded in that task, but they have dramatically changed the natural flow of sand that gets pushed along by currents and tides. The jetties act like dams that halt the flow of sand along the shore, which contributes to erosion.
For many years, the proper pattern of maintenance had been done. The channel was dredged every three years and the sand was dumped off Plum Island in order to continue its natural migration path along the beach. The jetties were repaired and maintained at their proper height.
That fell apart over the past decade or so, when dredging was stopped and the jetties were allowed to deteriorate.
It's a tale every property owner is familiar with — do the repairs regularly and the bills will be small, or let it go and pay the whopper bill when it all falls apart. We're paying the whopper bill, and it should serve as a lesson to us to make sure the proper maintenance gets done on a timely basis.
The jetties are an expensive piece of infrastructure to maintain, but there's no doubt that without them, we would have a ticking time bomb on our coast. In the 200 or so years prior to the jetties' construction, the river had periodically punched massive holes through both Salisbury Beach and Plum Island, dramatically shifting the course of the river and greatly impacting navigation. These were changes that sometimes occurred with devastating quickness, such as in 1839, when in the course of just two weeks, hurricanes caused the river to change its course by over a half-mile, chewing apart what had been sandy and stable dunes and blasting out a new riverbed.
In those days, there were no homes at the northern tip of the island. Today, there are 1,200. If such a shift were to occur today, perhaps $100 million or more in property damage would result.
What man has done to manipulate the natural course of the sea and sand also requires him to manage the rift that he has caused.
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