Nantucket is classic New England: sailing ships, cobblestone streets, grey shingle cottages with white trim, clam-chowder competitions — and class warfare. The latest outbreak is over a proposal by the island’s super-rich residents to try to hold back the Atlantic, which threatens to send their coastline mansions toppling.
A group of hyper-wealthy residents in one of the most exclusive corners of the island, the village of Siasconset, called locally Sconset, has embarked on a project to slow erosion by pumping sand from the ocean bed to extend the beach below their homes. On an island where money is not a problem, they are not seeking state or federal help but putting up the cash themselves: $25-million.
It is an extravagant project: the organisers admit that pumping the sand would only provide protection for about three to five years and then the whole process would have to begin all over again.
About a dozen homes on the bluff-tops have already been lost to the sea over the past 15 years. Houses on the bluff cost an estimated $15-million to $20-million.
But the project has run into opposition from the local community, in which there has long been resentment over flashy newcomers who have been pricing locals out of the housing market. A car bumper sticker reads: ”Gut fish,not houses.”
Josh Eldridge, who runs a fishing charter, said on Sunday he is opposed to the project, not out of envy at the rich but purely on environmental grounds, in particular the effects on fishing. He does not feel that the interests of the whole community should be sacrificed to protect the summer homes of the affluent few. ”I feel bad for them, but if the project goes ahead, it is going to be like living in an industrial park 24 hours a day.”
Funding for the project has come mainly from the cable-television billionaire Amos Hostetter Jnr; businessman Paul Soros, brother of George; and a commodities trader, Helmut Weymar, who have joined other residents to form the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund.
The whole of the United States coastline is at risk from climate change and the threat of rising sea levels. The federal government estimate is that a quarter of homes are in danger over the next 60 years. Nantucket, lying 48km off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is particularly vulnerable. Erosion has been a problem since the island was created but several violent Atlantic storms over the past 15 years have eaten into the land faster than residents had expected.
Weymar, who lives in Princeton but owns a house on Baxter Road, Siasconset, where the houses face the threat of toppling over a crumbling bluff on to the beach, told the New York Times the project is not just about protecting his home but the whole village. It would be ”pretty simple” for him to buy a new house elsewhere on the island, but, he said, the goal ”is to see that Sconset Village does not wash away”.
The wealthy residents have been toying with various projects over the past few years, but have come up against Massachusetts regulations banning the kind of beach protection that has been tried elsewhere, on the grounds that it only tends to shift the problem elsewhere. They have a better chance of getting the new project, described as ”beach nourishment”, through the state and local planning departments.
Short-lived barrier
The plan is to dredge up about two million cubic metres of sand from the Nantucket Shoals and pipe it to the beach, where it would hopefully form an extra, albeit short-lived, barrier.
Linda Holland, a former officer with the Nantucket Land Council conservation group, expresses concern about whether sufficient research has been done into the project, particularly into whether the shoals provided the island with protection. ”So if you are taking sand from the shoals, you could be losing protection,” she says.
The dispute is the latest in a series of clashes between the wealthy and long-term residents; over a new yacht club that will take over part of the coastline that had been regarded as public land and over a new golf club.
Dirk Roggeveen, administrator of the Nantucket Conservation Commission, which has a crucial permit authority over the beach project, told the New York Times that class is also an issue in the present dispute. ”The language of class warfare creeps into it,” he said. ”People concerned about the project make statements like, ‘They’re just rich people trying to protect their houses.”’
Ursula Austin, a teacher who has lived on the island for 35 years, is sceptical: ”I do not really believe you can change Mother Nature. How can you possibly go up against that?” She is adamant that the erosion is part of a natural cycle: while parts of the islands such as Siasconset are suffering from erosion, other parts of the island are seeing a natural build-up.
She regrets some of the changes the new wealth has brought and recalls when she arrived neighbours would come over with pumpkin pie as a welcome to the island.
At his fishing charter business, Eldridge disputes Weymar’s claim that it is the whole village and not just his and a few other homes of the affluent that are in danger.
Eldridge’s view of the project is coloured in part by the fact that it is only short term.
”If it was a long-term solution, that is one thing. But their own assessment is it is only for three to five years.”
Nantucket is an American Indian name, meaning ”the land far away”. For the wealthy owners of property on the cliffs above Siasconset, the danger is that if they do not get planning permission soon, their land too may soon be far away.
Offshore haven
Nantucket, the whaling town from which Captain Ahab set off to hunt Moby Dick, long ago swapped harpoons for providing a luxury retreat for America’s super-rich. It was a favourite haunt of ”old money”, such as the Vanderbilts, DuPonts and other wealthy families who built residences. In more recent years, the island has attracted the new rich, the likes of Michael Egan, the founder of Alamo rental cars, and Wayne Huizenga, the billionaire founder of Blockbuster videos. Egan went one better than building a swimming pool and tennis court; he had his own baseball court constructed.
The super-rich not only buy up land to construct their homes, but also neighbouring land to protect sea views or for houses for their staff. On summer weekends, parking space at the small airport is a problem as more than 250 Challengers, Gulfstreams and Citations a day land. Unable to afford to live on the island, about 400 workers fly in from the mainland for construction, plumbing and other services. – Guardian Unlimited Â