Documentary Will Offer Bird’s-Eye View To Erosion Problem

SANDWICH- As the small four-person airplane cruised over the east entrance of Cape Cod Canal at about a thousand feet last Friday afternoon, F. Randal Hunt aimed his video camera down toward the beaches that abut the stone jetties.
His goal was to document the vast geographical differences that exist between Scusset Beach, which is west of the canal, and the beaches to the east, including Town Neck Beach.
“In our approach, Scusset has a huge amount of sand that collects and piles up behind the jetty. You can see that the beach is gaining on the water,” Mr. Hunt said.
In stark contrast to this sandy area are the rocky beaches that lay to the east.  
“These beaches are much farther back and there is nothing but pebbles on Town Neck Beach. By the time you get to Horizons Beach, the rocks are potato size,” he said.
“That shot is worth a thousand words and really shows the crux of the problem,” said Mr. Hunt, a selectman in town and host of his own cable access television show.
For just about a year, Mr. Hunt has been working on a documentary that seeks to highlight the beach erosion that has plagued Sandwich beaches. As a selectman, he said he has had many conversations about the problem, but decided to produce this documentary after a conversation that he had with resident Paul W. Schrader of Farmersville Road, who has voiced concern about the diminishing shoreline. Mr. Hunt pointed out that the huge jetties that were built to protect the entrance to the canal are blocking the natural flow of sand from the Plymouth sand cliffs, essentially starving Sandwich’s beaches.
Mr. Hunt’s documentary will also look at problems with the inlet to the town’s old harbor. Troubles around the old harbor marsh are directly tied to an eastward shift and widening of that inlet caused by a succession of storms, including the No Name Storm of 1991. As a result of this shift, a large chunk of beach has been stripped from the Spring Hill coastline.
Mr. Hunt is especially concerned about the possible wash-through of the dunes.  
“It’s fascinating to me that the dunes are a perfect habitat for such endangered species as the piping plovers. Maintaining those dunes is good for the bird habitat while protecting against some 100-year storm. If we lose the barrier beach, and that opens up the entrance to Mill Creek to the bay, we could lose the habitat completely,” he said. And that would mean losing the marsh area, as well. “The marsh is the beginning of the food chain. It all begins there,” Mr. Hunt pointed out.
He said his reasons for making this documentary are two-fold, in that he wants to educate the public about the endangerment of the beaches and at the same to show the beauty of this area.   
As for the educational component, he said he plans to air the documentary on the local cable access Channel 13. Although he has not settled on a title for the documentary just yet, he said it will air in place of one of his three time slots reserved for television show, “A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing.” He is hoping that the show will, at the very least, educate the public on what is happening to this area and the measures people can take to protect what is there now.
He said if people understand the problem, that may be the first step in protecting the areas, especially the dunes.
Evidence of the public’s ignorance about the vulnerability of the dunes, he said, can be found in the form of debris from large bonfires built among the dunes and dogs allowed to roam the beaches, even during the months when town rules and regulations prohibit animals on the beach.
He said he plans to share his documentary with Sandwich High School teacher Gilbert D. Newton who teaches a class in environmental science, in hopes of reaching the young residents of the community.
While education will help to mitigate some of the problems on the beaches, the long-term solution would come in the form of a beach nourishment project, which would include adding sand to the beaches along this part of the coastline, that could cost upward of $3 million. With the Army Corps of Engineers preparing to dredge sand from the Canal within the next year, the town would like to be the beneficiary of the spoils from that project.   
According to a June presentation made by Kirk F. Bosma, coastal engineer with the Woods Hole Group, the consulting company working on a beach nourishment plan for the Old Harbor inlet, the town has two choices of where to place the spoils of the dredging. The first option would be to place the material on the town’s beaches, starting at the Canal jetty and heading along Town Neck Beach, which would restore the beach area that has been lost due to erosion. Mr. Hunt noted that when Mirant Corporation dredged the Canal more than five years ago and placed the sand on Town Neck Beach, the process did have a positive impact—for a while, anyway.  “The whole issue was to protect the dunes. While most of the sand was washed away by a storm, the damage to the existing dunes was minimal and the sand did its job,” he said.
Mr. Bosma said a second, and preferred, option of where to put the material would be to place the sand closer to the Old Harbor inlet. By placing the sand there, he said it would increase the beach area by 6 to 7 acres. This second plan also includes structurally realigning the inlet which would require using rocks from four small stone jetties, called “groins,” along Town Beach and rebuilding the mouth of the Old Harbor inlet.
“This is a resource that we want to keep and clearly it’s a resource that is endangered,” Mr., Hunt said.
Mr. Hunt specified that this documentary is not about blaming anybody, including the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the Cape Cod Canal. “The Army Corps has been very cooperative  in working with us. This is not about doing away with the Cape Cod Canal. There are some very good navigational reasons for the jetties. We are pointing out from a hydraulics standpoint what we can do to mitigate the problem. We want to do something to simulate the natural flow of sand that occurred before,” he said.
With more than 25 videotapes worth of footage to edit, Mr. Hunt is now in the process of whittling them down to just two 30-minute segments. He estimated the documentary will be ready for airing sometime in the first half of October and said that residents can check the website, Sandwichtv.org. and click on regular programs, then A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing, to find the viewing schedule.