Posted on February 18, 2019
NEWBURYPORT — Mayor Donna Holaday said on Friday that $22,500 in city money could soon be used to help prevent flooding in Plum Island’s Northern Reservation Terrace neighborhood.
The city was previously prepared to place a second layer of cement blocks along the edge of Reservation Terrace to build up the berm and protect nearby houses, but Holaday said officials cancelled the project after being told it would cause additional problems. As a result, the city is left with $22,500 it had allocated, and Holaday said she hopes the money can be put toward other dune replenishment efforts “as soon as possible.”
During Friday’s Merrimack River Beach Alliance meeting, elected officials discussed a local dredging project that would pull sand from the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers and add it to local beaches. The alliance is made up of local and state leaders, and members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Officials are still seeking permits to carry out the dredging and beach replenishment project, which could end up benefiting near-shore or onshore sites in Newburyport, Newbury and Salisbury.
During the meeting, the mayor stressed the importance of Plum Island as a barrier island protecting Newburyport from the kinds of floods that other coastal communities often deal with.
“I’ve been trying to shift some of the conversation about the importance of protecting the barrier island because we’d be Scituate without it — we’d be in really tough shape,” she said. Shoreline neighborhoods in Scituate have flooded several times in recent years from storm surge during high tides.
Holaday said she hopes to set up an “annual reserve for an appropriation account” during the city’s budgeting process this year to help support Plum Island’s beaches.
“They are part of our community. I’m trying to figure out a mechanism that our city can support in terms of having nourishment,” said Holaday.
She said she hopes that by the time summer starts, the city can establish a trust account from an increase in parking fees at the Plum Island point parking lot. The city owns half of the lot and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation owns the other half. The parking proceeds would be used to pay for other dune protection and remediation efforts, Holaday said.
During Friday’s meeting, local author and scientist Bill Sargent raised his concern about the fact the state Department of Environmental Protection has been absent from MRBA meetings in recent years, calling the issue “the 800-pound gorilla in the room.”
“They are public servants. I think it’s part of their job to attend these meetings, and all the other state agencies are there,” said Sargent, who contributes a weekly column to The Daily News. “They could help by telling us what we can and cannot do, and they could help provide consensus.”
Sargent said that during the MRBA’s next meeting, scheduled March 1, officials will discuss the option of purchasing a regional dredge that could be shared by several communities along the North Shore and used to pull up sand for various beach replenishment projects.
“It is so hard to get these things done… I think the optimistic thing is that we’re moving ahead with buying a regional dredge, and that will make things a lot easier,” said Sargent, adding that local offshore sand embankments could be used to replenish Plum Island dunes.
“We’d be able to do something on a yearly basis, and rebuild the berm on Reservation Terrace every year,” he said.
Source: newburyportnews.com
