2013

The elaborate project now unfolding to move four buildings on Richard and Jennifer Schifter’s property on a remote and windswept promontory at the extreme southeastern corner of Chappaquiddick, including an eight-thousand-square-foot home, is riveting. This very big project for a very small island has already cost the homeowners millions of dollars as they engage in a spellbinding race against nature to move their summer home and assorted other structures back from the edge of a rapidly eroding cliff.

Wasque Point is a remote place; this is the far southeastern corner of Chappaquiddick, an island off an island. The name comes from the Algonquin word Wannasque, which means “the ending.” Where the land ends, there is nothing but Atlantic Ocean, dotted with flocks of scoters bobbing where the waves break, and then it’s ocean as far as the eye can see.

For the International Chimney Corporation, moving Richard and Jennifer Schifter’s Chappaquiddick home is a relatively small job compared to some of the other jobs the company has completed.

Besides chimney work, the Buffalo, N.Y.-based company specializes in building relocation and historic preservation, among other things, all over the world (the company just completed a chimney project in Thailand).

While elaborate plans continue to unfold for moving a large Chappaquiddick house, the Edgartown conservation commission is grappling with a new issue: whether actions taken to stem the erosion can continue after the house is moved.

For months, the situation unfolding at Wasque Point where a rapidly eroding coastal bluff is swiftly approaching an 8,800-square-foot house, has captivated the Island.

2012

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission Thursday approved changes to a 22-year-old decision regarding a Chappaquiddick subdivision, removing an obstacle to possible relocation of the Schifter house.

In 1990, the MVC approved O. Stevens Leland Jr. and Timothy Leland’s application to divide a 27-acre parcel of land adjacent to Poucha Pond into a four-lot subdivision.

One lot was deeded to O. Stevens Leland, who built a house there in 2001.

Plans are underway to relocate a large house on Wasque Point that is threatened by a rapidly eroding shoreline.

The bluff on Richard and Jennifer Schifter’s Chappaquiddick property has been eroding at a rate that coastal geologists call alarming and unprecedented. Despite emergency measures to stanch the damage, the ocean is coming ever closer to the Schifters’ 8,800-square-foot house.

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