In Wellfleet, some homes are at risk of falling into the ocean as the coastal bluffs they sit on continue to erode. A Northwestern University professor says he has an idea that could help.
That's according to Jack Styler of the Provincetown Independent.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke to Jack recently to learn more.
Gilda Geist Who is Alessandro Rotta Loria, and what is his idea for a new technique to prevent coastline erosion?
Jack Styler Alessandro Rotta Loria is a professor of civil and environmental engineering from Northwestern, and he developed this idea in the lab in Chicago to prevent coastal erosion. It's a pretty fascinating idea. He says that in the lab, he found that he can take a material that is like a metal sheet, similar to chicken wire, and if he inserts that into sand and drips salt water onto it while running a very low voltage electrical current through that metal mesh, it results in the minerals that occur naturally in the salt water and sand binding to create a stronger material that he says can be as strong as cement.
GG What is the professor trying to do in Truro?
JS Professor Rotta Loria is working with a group of eight homeowners in North Truro. And that's because those homeowners who are on the bayside have seen the bluff in front of their houses start to erode at really rapid levels in the last few years. According to their project proposal, the short-term erosion rate is reaching nearly a foot a year, which is obviously very concerning for these homeowners. And so they've asked Professor Rotta Loria to see if he can take this technology and take it out of the lab and try it out in the real world for the first time in North Truro.
GG What did local experts you spoke to for this story think of Rotta Loria's idea?
JS Well, there was a mixed reaction and there was definitely some skepticism. For example, I spoke to the Center for Coastal Studies coastal geologist Mark Borrelli, and he was pretty clear that any method that tries to harden a shore is going to cause erosion somewhere else. And that's something that Mark Adams, who is a retired National Park Service coastal geologist, said as well. They're of the mindset that erosion is a natural process, it cannot be stopped and any solution that would harden a coastline would end up just causing problems somewhere else. For example, it could cause other parts of a bluff to erode more rapidly, or it could cause a beach underneath the bluff to become lower and lower because wind and sea hitting the beach again and again will continue to dredge sand, this time not from the bluff that may be hardened, but from the beach below. There were some other opinions. Gordon Peabody, the founder of Safe Harbor Environmental Services in Wellfleet, said that he thinks that the project was unique and very visionary and said that we should be trying new things, basically, to fix this problem that a lot of homeowners and businesses and people out here on the Outer Cape are being confronted with, which is being on a spit of land that is eroding at a really quick rate. The problem is, according to Borrelli of the Center for Coastal Studies, that erosion really can't be stopped. And his advice to homeowners on rapidly eroding beaches was pretty simple—you should sell.
GG What is the likelihood that Rotta Loria's project will get approved, and what is the next step in the approval process?
JS This project first came before the conservation commission in Truro in November and they've had a few meetings so far to discuss it, and they are going to do so again on February 2. But on February 2, they would just be approving whether or not to do the first phase, and that first phase would just install two test sites. So it would be a very small project that would be at two homeowners' houses. From what I've heard, it does seem likely that the conservation commission will approve of the test sites. However, that does not mean that they will approve of all eight homeowners' proposals to eventually use this technology.
