Future pinned to realistic assessment of sustainability

A man-made sand dune, stretching about 200 yards and engineered with steel rebar, its top covered with planted grasses, is the largest built object still standing along the entire Atlantic Avenue beachfront in Westerly.
To the dune’s left, facing the ocean, is an empty space where Sam’s Snack Shop once stood, before it was obliterated by Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge.
To its right are tons of sand covering the entire parking lot at Misquamicut State Beach, removed from buildings and homes along Atlantic Avenue in the aftermath of the storm.
Those piles of sand – which could be used to create new man-made dunes to protect the beach – may be the key to the beach community’s future survival, according to Caswell Cooke Jr., the executive director of the Misquamicut Business Association and a Westerly town councilman.
The reason is obvious. “The places protected by dunes survived,” Cooke said.
For instance, in Bradley Beach, N.J., man-made dune barriers constructed in 1996 at a cost of about $10,000 protected the community from the worst ravages of Sandy, leaving the town’s boardwalk and its houses 75 feet away intact. While the town suffered about $3 million in storm damage, it fared much better than many of its neighboring communities.
Meetings with Westerly official to discuss possible plans for man-made dune construction and beach re-nourishment are now under way, according to R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council spokeswoman Laura Dwyer. “We are encouraging the town to do one or the other, or both,” she said.
Beyond what happens with the beach and man-made dunes, plans for reconstruction of buildings and businesses are moving ahead slowly, as owners try to determine what the best options are, according to Westerly Town Manager Steven T. Hartford. “We’re still in the planning stages of reconstruction,” he said.
A site evaluation was conducted recently to determine a more precise estimate of commercial and residential property damages along Atlantic Avenue and, in particular, damages to their septic systems. Among the commercial properties examined were the Andrea Hotel and the Windjammer Lounge. Brian Moore, who coordinates permitting of septic systems for the R.I. Department of Environmental Management, attended the site meetings. He called the damages “the most significant I’ve witnessed in more than 20 years at DEM.”
The Andrea Hotel suffered extensive damage, Moore said, and one of the options being explored for the reconstruction of its septic system is to build a conduit underneath Atlantic Avenue and pump the effluent to a new conventional septic system to be built on a parking lot across the street. The first step, according to Moore, “is to hire an engineer to do some preliminary testing to see if the land across the street is suitable for a septic system – and for what size and type,” he said. Based on the findings, he continued, the owners can then make a decision about what level of return to business they are going to contemplate for the coming season.
“Do they keep the restaurant and not open the rooms? Until they get the results of a preliminary engineering site investigation, they won’t know what they can build and how much it will cost,” Moore explained. “Nothing is going to be resolved quickly, from a rebuilding standpoint,” Moore said.
The costs of a new septic system can be substantial – for a business such as a hotel, it can be as much as $500,000 for a traditional septic system and $1 million for an above-ground, denitrification system, according to Moore. For an individual homeowner, a traditional septic system runs about $15,000, while an above-ground, denitrification system costs about $30,000.
At this time, there are no emergency funds available from the state to support septic-system repair and construction, according to Moore. Owners will have to depend on property-insurance claims or borrow the money. The U.S. Small Business Administration is offering loans to businesses of up to $2 million, at a rate between 3 percent and 5 percent, according to Moore. Insurance rates, which have been rising for about 10 years for coastal properties, will continue to increase in the aftermath of the storm, according to Howard Thorp, president and CEO of Thorp & Trainer, an insurance firm in Westerly.
“Rates have been going up, and some companies have stopped writing policies in Rhode Island within a mile of the shore,” Thorp said. “We’ve been dancing this dance for the last eight, 10 years. Some homeowners have seen their rates go up 100 percent if they live near the coast. We’ve been constantly moving clients around, trying to get the best price for the best coverage.”
Most of the damage along Atlantic Avenue in Westerly will be covered by the national flood-insurance program, according to Thorp, with limits of $250,000 for individual homeowners and $500,000 for businesses. But septic systems are not covered.
“We’ve seen a few initial, preliminary checks,” said Thorp, who is also president-elect of the Independent Insurance Agents of Rhode Island. “But it’s been slow.”
Both rebuilding and beach reconstruction – without paying attention to natural processes – may prove to be an expensive mistake, according to Jonathan Stone, the executive director of Save The Bay. “The coastline is going to do what it’s going to do – retreat.” Stone contends that there are no easy solutions, no magical outcomes. And no let up on change.
Sea levels are rising 60 percent faster than expected, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported on Nov. 28.
The question, according to Stone, is how much money will the state of Rhode Island and municipalities pour into rebuilding public infrastructure that promises to be soon washed away again in the next big storm.
“We have repeated mistakes, mistakes that have been repeated up and down the East Coast.” Instead, Stone called for a more “adaptive” approach to managing property development along the coastline. “We need to respect and reflect the natural processes in any reconstruction and development work,” he said. •

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