Letter: Restoration Doomed To Fail
- veroldham
- Feb 21
- 3 min read
Sandwich Enterprise, Letters to the Editor, Feb 12, 2026
Town Neck Beach in Sandwich has undergone revival and ruin in quick succession over the past year, which has frustrated locals and visitors alike. As a Sandwich resident and concerned climate scientist, I can’t help but notice that the recent restoration project was doomed to fail and that the talk around town about how to fix the issue is full of misinformation.
Here, I outline the science behind beach erosion, the reason why adding sand or solid barriers doesn’t work, and I will suggest a natural beach restoration strategy that would create a longer-lasting solution.
Our changing climate has led to higher sea level as well as increased storms and their associated flooding, which directly lead to beach erosion and loss. By 2100, the one-meter predicted sea level rise will reduce coastal ecosystems by up to 80% along the East Coast of the United States. In fact, sea levels are rising faster here on the US East Coast than the global average, yikes. In addition to rising tides, the 2020s have brought about stronger storms and hurricanes as well as record numbers of these storms along the East Coast, and these storms have brought with them flooding and erosion.
Which is exactly what we’ve seen at Town Neck Beach. To keep up with the changing shoreline, Sandwich spent $10 million on a beach nourishment effort, conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Woods Hole Group, which dredged 320,000 cubic yards of sand from the Cape Cod Canal and deposited it on the beach; the project was completed last January 2025. But the sand didn’t last and is gone already one year later…not surprising since this same method has already been attempted nine times since 1990.
Leslie Fields of the Woods Hole Group blamed the placement of the sand for the most recent erosion and suggested adding yet more sand to solve the issue. But it is a fool who repeats the same mistakes and expects different results. On Facebook groups, community members suggested building a solid retaining wall to keep the waves at bay. But this won’t work either; waves and tides contain energy that needs to be absorbed, not rebounded.
The solution is to create resilient dunes, and luckily for us, natural dunes are designed to do just that. Natural dunes (like those at Sandy Neck, for example) are shock absorbers between ocean waves—they bend and flex, dissipating the energy of storms. It is the layers of sand and plant biomass contained within the dunes that mitigate erosion and flooding. Natural dunes are more than piles of sand, and that’s where previous beach restoration efforts have missed the mark.
Coastal dunes are composed of layers of sand held together by the deep root networks of native plants like beach grass, sea oats and shrubs, like our native bayberry. Without this network of plant material, dunes are doomed to be destroyed. Beach restoration projects need to include careful planning and planting, along with the incorporation of natural materials (coconut coir, thatching of plant debris, et cetera), as well as dune fencing to encourage the deposition of sand and to mitigate wind and wave impacts.
We can’t stop our changing tides, but we can work with nature to create a solution that will last longer.
Veronique Carignan
Route 6A
East Sandwich
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