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Erosion Continues, ‘Town Hall’ Camp Relocated
by Alan Pollock CHATHAM — Persistent erosion on North Beach has prompted one camp owner to move his cottage 50 yards away from the encroaching sea, and may even threaten the Hammatt camp and the other buildings temporarily stored on that land. On Friday, John Kelley obtained emergency permission to move the “Town Hall,” a one-room camp, to a safer location on his land. Chatham Police Capt. John Cauble said the permit required sign-offs from local and state officials, and was granted on the condition that the building be moved without heavy equipment, and under the close watch of shorebird monitors. The building was moved Sunday without incident, Kelley said. The building could be moved only because there were no piping plovers nesting in the area, he said. “That saved us. If there were plovers there, no matter how nice people wanted to be, it wouldn’t have happened,” Kelley said. There were two cottages on Kelley’s North Beach property; the main camp was moved temporarily to the Hammatt property in March, leaving Town Hall behind. Kelley said he was afraid that if he had tried to move Town Hall to the Hammatt land, there wouldn’t have been room for other camps there. On Sunday, pickup trucks pulled Town Hall on wooden skids to its new location. The camp earned its name because it was formerly used by George “Bub” Sears of Dennis, who was known as the Mayor of North Beach. Aerial photos of the tip of North Beach show continued northward erosion of the tip, and continued narrowing of the barrier beach because of erosion on the east-facing shoreline. At high tide, water is eroding the face of the dune that protects the Hammatt property, leaving no room for ORV access. Typically, southwest storms cause the outer beach to widen in the spring, but that widening has not yet occurred, Kelley said. “If it’s doing the same thing that it’s doing right now in three weeks, all of us are going to feel really bad,” he said. Chatham Coastal Resources Director Ted Keon said the First Village camps on temporary cribbing at the Hammatt property are by no means out of harm’s way. “I’d rather be where they are now than where they were,” he said. “But they’re still quite vulnerable where they are.” Keon said it is possible that the outer beach has not undergone its usual seasonal widening because it is now close to the inlet, which captures the sand that would otherwise accrete there. Cauble said his first-hand observations of the beach bear out that theory. “As that front beach continues to erode, that dune protecting the [Hammatt] property is not what it used to be,” Cauble said.
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