A complicated project to rebuild the eroding Squibnocket shoreline will head to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission for review.
In the works for more than a year, the project involves an unusual collaboration by the town and the Squibnocket Farm homeowners association to restore the oceanfront by building a new road and manmade dune, relocating a parking lot and removing an old stone revetment.
The project is actually two projects, one sponsored by the town, the other by the private homeowner group. Both were approved by Chilmark voters last winter. The town conservation commission recently began reviewing the plans, and at a public hearing last week voted to refer them to the MVC for review as a development of regional impact.
The referral is mandatary since the work will take place in the coastal district of critical planning concern.
New questions surfaced recently over the plans. The height of the proposed new road, which will be a raised causeway leading to Squibnocket Farm, is a subject for fresh debate. There is also ongoing debate over removing the revetment, and whether all the existing stonework should be removed or just the part near the town parking lot.
Engineers for the town and the homeowners advocate removing the revetment near the town parking lot but leaving in place boulders to the west.
Reid Silva an engineer with Vineyard Land Surveying working for the town, said at a hearing last week that the remaining boulders could help break up the waves and slow the rate of erosion around the area called Money Hill. Mark Haley of Haley and Aldrich working for the homeowners, agreed.
But conservation commission member Chris Murphy, who has been critical of the homeowner portion of the plan, strongly advocated removing all the boulders, including those farther from shore that were placed after Hurricane Bob in 1991.
“We should have been doing it years ago and we’ve all kind of winked and looked the other way,” Mr. Murphy said. “If we want this beach to heal, the best way to make it heal is to put it back in as natural a state as we can.”
Charles Parker, an abutter who had at one time presented an alternative plan, raised more questions about the details of the manmade dune which would replace the current parking lot. Engineers say they do not expect the dune to last long in the face of Atlantic storms. Mr. Parker suggested a taller dune of 12 or 13 feet, possibly made of cobble, and he recommended a five-year maintenance plan.
“Why put it in if it’s just going to get washed out?” he said.
But Jim Malkin, the former chairman of an independent town committee that led an exhaustive public review of the plan last year, expressed frustration with the ongoing discontent of some abutters.
“We sat in this room for seven months,” Mr. Malkin said. “We looked at tide charts, we looked at erosion, and we looked at scouring. And at the end of the day we made a presentation that basically included a lot of what Mr. Parker had suggested.”
Review at the town level will continue as both projects concurrently move to the MVC for more public hearings.
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