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Swept away: $500k sand dune built to protect US homes disappears in days

theguardian.com

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Re: Swept away: $500k sand dune built to protect US homes disappears in days

#51

Post by kitd »

mocha_nate wrote: post #18
Loughla wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the logic is behind the hard structure ban. Is it only aesthetics, or is there some ecological reason?

hard structures increase erosion around it. maybe its something to do with that.

That depends on design and implementation.

Elmer Sands on the UK south coast, was badly affected by erosion. Authorities built a series of elongated rock islands parallel with the shore (visible here [1]). These a) protect the shore from wave damage, and b) encourage the build up of sand behind them, ie between them and the shore. Yes, there is still erosion, but you can better control where it happens and who it affects.

[1] - https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.7920857,-0.6012103,1309m/d...

Re: Swept away: $500k sand dune built to protect US homes disappears in days

#52

Post by fakedang »

soco wrote: post #31
Ekaros wrote: post #21

How many homes are we talking about here? Would it make more long term sense just to abandon them?

Entire island states like Tuvalu face a similar fate and they have nowhere else to go... I know it's unrelated to this particular situation but the sea is the sea and doesn't care much about a costly sandy bump. Yes, the Netherlands managed to pull some tricks but the site is different and they used hard structures anyway.

Honestly at this point Tuvalu should use the money it makes from the .tv domain (and otherwise) to relocate and buy some vast farmland abroad. It's sad to see the state of affairs some islands are in. That's one kind of refugee immigration I could back. Just 11,000 people.

Re: Swept away: $500k sand dune built to protect US homes disappears in days

#54

Post by Ekaros »

master_crab wrote: post #2

Perfectly acceptable for homeowners to spend their own money to save their houses. But it’s the last sentence in the story that makes me boil over: “Now, the homeowners have asked the state to step in and provide assistance.”

I'm fine with government providing assistance, as long as property tax collected matches the expenditure.

Re: Swept away: $500k sand dune built to protect US homes disappears in days

#55

Post by jmacd »

acdha wrote: post #27
tromp wrote: post #10

> Local news outlet Fox59 reported that the Republican state senator Bruce Tarr was working to secure $1.5m in state funding to replenish the sand. > Tarr, noting that a more permanent seawall was not an option because hard structures like these are not allowed on Massachusetts beaches If the only alternative is to drain state funds dumping tonnes of sand that quickly get swept away, then it's time to change the (by)…

The problem is that seawalls are very expensive and make the problem worse for your neighbors. If you build a sea wall, you break the natural process which replenishes sand on the adjacent beaches and they’ll shrink and disappear. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/09/26/lessons-from-califor... The real solution is to accept that anyone who bought in the last half century should have factored in the scientific evidenc…

A sea wall performs much differently than a properly sloped structure. There are different engineering approaches to this problem and they function well when in place.

That said, it's a waste of time, money and resources.

Re: Swept away: $500k sand dune built to protect US homes disappears in days

#56

Post by pixl97 »

acdha wrote: post #27
tromp wrote: post #10

> Local news outlet Fox59 reported that the Republican state senator Bruce Tarr was working to secure $1.5m in state funding to replenish the sand. > Tarr, noting that a more permanent seawall was not an option because hard structures like these are not allowed on Massachusetts beaches If the only alternative is to drain state funds dumping tonnes of sand that quickly get swept away, then it's time to change the (by)…

The problem is that seawalls are very expensive and make the problem worse for your neighbors. If you build a sea wall, you break the natural process which replenishes sand on the adjacent beaches and they’ll shrink and disappear. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/09/26/lessons-from-califor... The real solution is to accept that anyone who bought in the last half century should have factored in the scientific evidenc…

>The problem is that seawalls are very expensive

That's only one problem... The bigger problem is something you hit at, which is mass ignorance of complex topics that end up getting turned in to political sound bites. At least 30 years ago, and probably longer you could pick up books on bathymetry and arenology that described the physics of the situation and really gave dire warnings. Without adding things like rising sea level, the moment you start building near the beach bad things start happening quickly. Tall building interrupt wind currents, these wind currents change the shape and angle of the beach. Changing the shape of the beach changes the how waves scour the sand off the beach and leads to rapid erosion. This leads to people building sea walls, which just moves the feedback loop out a bit. What typically happens without constant replenishment is the ocean will continue to get deeper directly up to the seawall (losing your prime tourist attraction) until the seawall falls over.

A seawall is how you turn a million dollar problem in to a billion dollar one.

At the end of the day human ambitions and the ocean are not really compatible. We like to think we can tame anything and exploit its resources safely and cheaply. To use a bad analogy, it's like seeing a beautiful unicorn and capturing it because you love the way it looks. But after you capture it, its bright white coat grows dull and grey. It's horn falls off. It gets tons of medical issues requiring more and more expensive treatment. Suddenly everyone is claiming it's a ripoff and you never had a unicorn in the first place.

Re: Swept away: $500k sand dune built to protect US homes disappears in days

#57

Post by tialaramex »

cushychicken wrote: post #3

If you’re betting against the ocean, half a million bucks seems like a piddling small amount to bring to the table. Like, so small an amount that you probably shouldn’t be allowed to play the game. Part of why you have table stakes is to keep small players out of the game, and the ocean is maybe the biggest, most powerful player in the largest game on earth. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)

Eh, the ocean is just moisture on the outside of the rock, it seems like a big deal to us because the rock itself is so enormous we just forget its there. There is so much rock that just by existing it exerts a powerful force on us all the time and we just don't even think about that.

It's so enormous that we don't know for sure what's inside it. It's very hot in there, and radioactive, and generally hostile to life as we know it, but we've barely scratched the surface, we haven't really tunnelled much deeper into the rock than the thin layer of moisture you're making a big deal about, which is essentially nothing - a few kilometers. The rock is like twelve thousand kilometres across.

Re: Swept away: $500k sand dune built to protect US homes disappears in days

#59

Post by ryandvm »

acdha wrote: post #27
tromp wrote: post #10

> Local news outlet Fox59 reported that the Republican state senator Bruce Tarr was working to secure $1.5m in state funding to replenish the sand. > Tarr, noting that a more permanent seawall was not an option because hard structures like these are not allowed on Massachusetts beaches If the only alternative is to drain state funds dumping tonnes of sand that quickly get swept away, then it's time to change the (by)…

The problem is that seawalls are very expensive and make the problem worse for your neighbors. If you build a sea wall, you break the natural process which replenishes sand on the adjacent beaches and they’ll shrink and disappear. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/09/26/lessons-from-califor... The real solution is to accept that anyone who bought in the last half century should have factored in the scientific evidenc…

> The real solution is to accept that anyone who bought in the last half century should have factored in the scientific evidence of climate change and not expect taxpayers to subsidize their failure to plan appropriately.

It's mostly not even climate change. The reality is that without a great deal of very expensive intervention from humans, sand coastlines are constantly shifting and changing. Building long term structures in these places has ALWAYS been folly.

The worst part is it's not even irrational because the rest of the country will fund the billions of dollars for state and federal projects to shore up these properties indefinitely.

Re: Swept away: $500k sand dune built to protect US homes disappears in days

#60

Post by pixl97 »

awestley wrote: post #8
master_crab wrote: post #2

Perfectly acceptable for homeowners to spend their own money to save their houses. But it’s the last sentence in the story that makes me boil over: “Now, the homeowners have asked the state to step in and provide assistance.”

I agree, but to be fair it was also the state that limited them such a silly option. They can't do anything more permanent than sand. Which, I understand has an environmental impact, but the beaches are going to keep eroding so why not "draw a line in the sand" so to speak and help protect the beaches more permanently. Regardless of how lives there now. * I live in the state but no where near the water. So I'm sure m…

>help protect the beaches more permanently.

Then you get rid of the houses....

The shape of the shore is an equation. In it you have have a massive pool of energy that is the water and its currents. You have a second smaller, yet still massive in human terms, pool of energy in the wind. Then you have the slope of the land from a few miles on shore to many (maybe even hundreds of miles) offshore. This is the lever of the machine. It weighs billions of tons and is miles long. What exactly does permanent mean when you stick something between an anvil and hammer that grinds down mountains. And in specific, you stick it where it becomes the focal point for that energy?

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