If you ever constructed a sand castle at the beach, you know exactly how Salisbury, Massachusetts, beachfront homeowners are feeling today.
Last month, construction began on a giant sand dune to protect their properties from nor'easter storms after two hit the town and brought in historic flooding in January.
The project cost upwards of a half a million dollars.
It sounded like a great plan.
But just three days after the sand dune was finished, another nor'easter blew in and washed away the entire project.
"What we built this past month, sure, we thought would last longer," Tom Saab, president of the nonprofit Salisbury Beach Citizens For Change, said in an interview Monday. "But this king high tide hit with a storm out at sea and it was devastating."
Of course, modern meteorologists are blaming everybody's favorite boogie-force, climate change.
"From nor'easters to hurricanes, Salisbury gets touched by several large storms each year," weather.com digital meteorologist Jonathan Belles said. "Their proximity to the Atlantic Ocean gives them a source of moisture and their northern latitude also firmly places them under the powerful jet stream during much of the year. The town is also affected by coastal flooding pushed ashore by storms out in the Atlantic."
And scientists say all of that is likely to get worse due to rising global temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change is linked to more intense storms packed with more rain, and more extreme weather in general.
Add to that rising sea levels, which exacerbate impacts from seasonal changes in ocean depth, storm activity and high tides.
"All these things have cumulative effects," Belles said.
However, the problem isn't a new one.
"It's an ongoing battle here," Saab said. "I've been doing this since 1971.
"We have to continue to fight because if you don't keep trucking in sand and rebuilding the dunes, then the properties will definitely have no protection at all."
The people that live on the beach don't want to abandon their homes, as most of them have been in the family for generations, and unless they find a better solution than feeding the Atlantic more sand, it sounds like that battle isn't going to end any time soon.
I'm no environmental engineer or anything like that, but my first inclination would be to stop their water invasions the same we stop border invasions.
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