"What money can’t buy: a break from nature’s fury; Scouring seas were closing in on a Chappaquiddick manse. The owner is now moving it all — but to what end?" by Jenna Russell | Globe Staff, April 07, 2013
CHAPPAQUIDDICK — Six years after Washington, D.C., private equity firm partner Richard Schifter and his wife, Jennifer, finished building their summer retreat, the cliff where it sits is crumbling into the sea at a rate sometimes surpassing a foot a day. Erosion of the bluff, on Wasque Point at the southern tip of Chappaquiddick, accelerated after April 2007, when a fierce nor’easter punched a hole through the barrier beach at nearby Norton Point, changing how the ocean moves around the island.
Now that the distance between their swimming pool and the edge of the bluff has dwindled from 220 feet to a mere 40, the Schifters have launched an urgent quest to save their property by moving it back from the cliff. The gambit, which locals guess will cost millions, has become a closely watched saga on Martha’s Vineyard, drawing scrutiny from neighbors and local officials.
Coming in the midst of national debate about the sustainability of coastal communities, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and a series of ferocious winter storms, the dilemma faced by one family in a quiet corner of the Vineyard has forced islanders to confront hard questions: about the force of nature and the changing climate, the limits of human resistance, and the shape their evolving island will take in the future.
Undercurrents of amazement run through the debate — at the stunning speed of the erosion, and at the audacity of the gamble being waged. If the Schifters and their engineers have miscalculated, and the ocean continues to eat away their land at the same pace, their plan to move the house back 275 feet will not be enough to save it for long.
If you look at one of their time-lapse photo spreads the thing actually expanded from 2001 to 2010 and was relatively stable. If you do a 20 year comparison it looks real bad.
Hey, figures lie and liars figure (and then they publish a newspaper).
“It is a question, if spending all this money to move the house, when it might only be safe for a year or two, is something reasonable to allow,” Edward Vincent Jr., chairman of the Edgartown Conservation Commission, said at a meeting last month, before the board voted unanimously to authorize the relocation. “We’ve seen tremendous erosion the last 50, 60 years, and whether that point will be there in another 10 years, I don’t know.”
Erosion is not new to the Vineyard, or to Chappaquiddick, the 6-square-mile island east of Edgartown, reached by a tiny ferry, where fewer than 200 people live year-round.
For centuries, residents and scientists have documented changes in the size and shape of the island, including periods of dramatic transformation as well as less dynamic intervals. Surveys dating to the 1700s show previous breaches in the Norton Point barrier beach, breaks which eventually closed as the shifting ocean currents slowly restored sand deposits.
Turns out nature has wrecked and rebuilt the beaches over centuries, huh? I was led to believe it was human-caused global warming.
If the general pattern is familiar, though, the situation now unfolding at Wasque (pronounced “way-skwee”) Point has generated sharply differing opinions — on how soon the breach might close, slowing the erosion; on the role of climate change and rising sea levels in what is happening; and on how much leeway should be granted to homeowners who build in an environment known to be in flux.
Except sea levels are stable right now.
Also see: Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'
One of them anyway.
Some observers call the recent pace of erosion unprecedented and unforeseeable. Hundreds of feet of sandy beach have vanished since the 2007 breach, in addition to the more recent collapse of the bluff itself. Others say the rapid changes are not so surprising, and that the Schifters’ plight might have been avoided if those who built the house had minded the lessons of history....
Yeah, it's all nature at work.
As climate change causes glaciers to melt and warming oceans to expand, Massachusetts is particularly vulnerable.
Tell it to the turtles. They are freezing because the water is too cold. Meanwhile, I'm heating up over the endless lies.
Sea levels here are rising three to four times faster than the global average, according to a 2012 US Geological Survey report. That means when storms hit — even low-intensity storms — flooding and erosion could be intensified.
Please stop it, Globe. Please.
As for moving the house, who gives a schit?
Some Vineyard towns have started to make tough decisions. In Chilmark earlier this year, officials denied a request to move a modest summer house teetering on the edge of an eroding cliff, saying the structure’s relocation would simply be postponing the inevitable. The house, above Stonewall Beach, was ordered torn down instead.
In an interview, Richard Schifter said his quandary offered no easy solution.
“In the absence of action, we would end up with a house on the beach, which nobody wants,” he said. “So do you demolish the house or do you move it? The decision makers have supported the idea that we move the house instead of demolishing it.”
The Schifters are not the only property owners in trouble on Wasque Point, though their predicament — and aggressive, expensive response to it — has attracted the most attention. A smaller, 30-year-old house nearby, owned by a Lexington couple, is also threatened by the fast- advancing ocean.
The homeowner, Jerry Wacks, expressed sadness at the Schifters’ plight and said he has been troubled by the “downright mean” tone taken by some critics.
“No one knows what it’s like to be in this predicament until you’re in it,” he said. “At the time all these houses were built, there was nothing illegal or wrong about it. We were almost a quarter-mile back when we built, and no one even imagined anything like this could happen . . . It’s easy to second-guess, but at the time, looking at it, it looked like a long way away.”
He did not respond when asked what he plans to do about the threat to his own house.
Edgartown officials say it would be difficult to deny the Schifters the right to move their house, regardless of how fruitless the effort might turn out to be. “It’s Mr. Schifter’s money,” said Vincent, the Conservation Commission chairman.
Still, some islanders have criticized the commission for its decision, saying members’ first responsibility is to protect the fragile bluff from damage. They fear massive digging at the site could permanently scar it or leave it even more vulnerable to erosion — with no guarantee that the upheaval will save the house.
Addressing concerns that the cliff might keep receding to the house’s new location, Peter Rosen, a coastal geologist hired by the Schifters to assess the erosion, called the past winter “a very, very rare circumstance of storm after storm” and predicted the rate of erosion will slow to a more normal six to nine feet per year.
But even Richard Schifter acknowledged the risk that it might not....
Increasingly, local officials are dealing with the uncertainties. Elsewhere on the Vineyard, in Aquinnah, the iconic Gay Head lighthouse is also threatened by erosion and in urgent need of relocation....
Roger Becker, president of the Chappaquiddick Island Association, said he has heard some support for the Schifters, “people saying, if it was my house, I hope they would let me move it.”
But many others are simply incredulous.
“The word I hear is ‘crazy’,” said Becker, a longtime island resident who objected to the size of the Schifters’ house when it was built, and was motivated by its construction to run for the Planning Board, where he served five years.
The project has raised concerns about traffic on the quiet island — hundreds of truck trips will be required to ferry in heavy equipment and carry out debris — and the environmental impact on Wasque Point.
Crews moving the house will dig a giant trench around the foundation — 450 feet long, 20 feet deep, and within 30 feet of the cliff’s edge — so that the entire basement (bowling alley and movie theater included) can be lifted on steel beams and rolled on dollies with the house to its new location.
Excuse me? The BASEMENT has a BOWLING ALLEY and MOVIE THEATER?!
Wow, these are not your regular average American, are they? It's an elite story for a paper frequented by elite.
The New York company handling the move has previously relocated numerous lighthouses (including, in 2007, a Nantucket lighthouse threatened by erosion), a Minneapolis theater, and a Newark airport terminal that weighed more than 7,000 tons, according to its website.
The scale of the four-month Chappaquiddick project has attracted the attention of the Vineyard’s Wampanoag tribe, which wants to protect any tribal artifacts potentially in the house’s path, as well as the Trustees of Reservations, the nonprofit conservation group that owns the pristine beachfront preserve next to the Schifters. Recent erosion has swallowed much of the 200-acre property, including a parking lot, stairs and boardwalks; the wide expanse of white sand beach, open to the public, has narrowed to a strip beneath the cliffs.
Despite the local concerns, Schifter said his family has felt buoyed by waves of support....
Clever.
--more--"
Also see: Lost in the Sands of Time
Related:
"Kurtis puts the pieces together and finally a story emerges that makes sense -- Ted was not in the car. He'd bailed and returned to the party, found out only the next morning when an aide rushed up and whispered in his ear."
He's dead now. It's time the truth came out.
UPDATE: Chappaquiddick mansion: Man vs. sea vs. neighbors
One more winter blow: disappearing Cape beaches
Another Sunday Globe Special! They have become as predictable as the tides.
